Quote from Josh Heupel shows how he does one off-field thing very differently than Jeremy Pruitt did at Tennessee
Tennessee Vols fans are well-aware by now that Josh Heupel does things differently than Jeremy Pruitt did during his time as the head football coach at UT. That's not to say that everything Pruitt did at Tennessee was bad — that's certainly not the case. Pruitt did right by the players at UT. And I […]
Tennessee Vols fans are well-aware by now that Josh Heupel does things differently than Jeremy Pruitt did during his time as the head football coach at UT.
That's not to say that everything Pruitt did at Tennessee was bad — that's certainly not the case. Pruitt did right by the players at UT. And I believe he truly had their best interests in mind while he was the Vols' head coach.
But when you go 16-19 over three years, there are obviously some things that need to be done differently.
A big part of Pruitt's problems at Tennessee involved his coaching staff. The head coach gets all the praise, but without a great staff, head coaches can't accomplish much.
Pruitt went through a litany of staff members during his three years at UT. He had two offensive coordinators and two defensive coordinators in three seasons. The only position coach that didn't change during his three seasons was the offensive line coach (Will Friend).
Heupel, meanwhile, has only had to replace two staff members so far as he enters his third season as the Vols' head coach. That continuity has been a big reason why Heupel's been able to have success at Tennessee.
Why has Heupel been able to keep his staff together while Pruitt couldn't?
A big reason is Heupel's hiring process.
Pruitt didn't really have a process. He just hired who he thought he should hire.
And that usually didn't work out.
Pruitt, for example, famously didn't even interview Jimmy Brumbaugh before hiring him as the Vols' defensive line coach in 2020.
“When we had the job come open, we didn’t interview anybody else”, said Pruitt in early 2020. “We didn’t interview him (Brumbaugh). We just offered him the job and he came.”
Pruitt ended up firing Brumbaugh just four games into the 2020 season (Pruitt coached the defensive line the rest of the season).
That's obviously not an ideal way to approach making a hire. And it's not how Heupel makes hires.
Heupel has promoted from within to fill the openings he's had so far at Tennessee (he promoted Kelsey Pope to wide receivers coach and Alec Abeln to tight ends coach…he also promoted Joey Halzle, who was already the quarterbacks coach, to offensive coordinator this offseason).
But just because Heupel promoted from within doesn't mean he failed to look at outside options.
Heupel hired the coaches that he believes are best suited for the job, but he went through a process to make sure he made the right hires.
The Tennessee head coach talked about that process on Monday during an appearance on 104.5 The Zone's "Ramon, Kayla, and Will".
"When you are able to develop really smart, great teachers that care about the young people inside of our program and want to help develop a man but can teach at an elite level, then you are able to promote from within and know that you got the right guy," explained Heupel. "I'm always going to go through a process of interviewing people and making sure that we have the right guy."
"Guys are going to get jobs from Tennessee," added Heupel. "You want it to happen the way that it's happened. Kodi Burns (former Vols WRs coach) had an opportunity to fulfill a lifelong dream of being an NFL coach — gets a wide receiver job. Alex Golesh (former Vols OC/TEs coach) is fortunate enough to get a head coaching job. You want that. In this profession, you want people on your staff to continue to grow and have an opportunity to move up the ladder. I think it speaks to the success of what we're doing inside this program that guys are getting those opportunities."
One of the reasons that Pruitt failed at Tennessee was because he didn't have any previous head coaching experience. He took over a tough situation (the Vols were a mess in late 2017 after Butch Jones was fired) and he had to learn on the job how to be the "CEO" of a program.
Heupel, on the other hand, had three years of head coaching experience at UCF that he could lean on when he took the Tennessee job. He had already gone through the growing pains of a new coach, made some mistakes, and then learned from those mistakes.
Learning how to hire assistant coaches was certainly part of that process for Heupel.
If Pruitt gets another chance as a head coach, he'll likely do a much better job than he did at Tennessee. Conversely, Heupel probably wouldn't have led the Vols to an 11-2 season in 2022 without that previous experience at UCF.
After many failed attempts at making a good hire, Tennessee got the right guy at the right time. And Heupel has surrounded himself with the right people. It's one of the most important ingredients for success in the SEC and Heupel has nailed it so far.
Featured image via Brianna Paciorka/News Sentinel / USA TODAY NETWORK
