Legendary former Tennessee Vols head coach Phillip Fulmer, who now serves as UT's athletic director, has a lot of faith in Jeremy Pruitt.

Of course, it's not exactly unusual for an athletic director to have faith in the head football coach. Every athletic director in the country sounds confident in their head football coach up until the day a change is made. There's usually no gray area.

But Fulmer is different than most athletic directors. And it's not just because he's a former head coach.

Fulmer knows what it takes to win at the highest level at Tennessee. If things aren't going well, he isn't going to sugarcoat it. Fulmer isn't a politician. He's a football man.

And he's going to call it like it is.

Fulmer wasn't thrilled with the 1-4 start last season, but he knew Tennessee was on the cusp of turning the program around.

In a recent interview with The Tennesseean, Fulmer said "It didn’t look like it when we were 1-4 and at least one of the games – probably two of the games – that we could have or should have won. But you could see the progress that we were making."

Fulmer didn't attempt to find any silver linings in the Vols' putrid start last season. He isn't trying to rationalize those losses. Fulmer believes Tennessee should've won those games (against Georgia State and BYU).

When Fulmer was asked how he felt about the end of the 2019 season, the hall of fame coach said "we’ve still got lots of work to do, I mean, tons of work to do to get where we want to".

Fulmer added "We have established a culture of toughness here on both sides of the ball. We’re not nearly there on offense yet, but we’re a lot better than we were. I mean, we inherited a mess. I mean, it was a mess."

If nothing else, Fulmer is blunt and honest when it comes to his assessment of Tennessee football.

So when he says the Vols have a great football coach, it's probably because UT legitimately has a great football coach.

#Vols AD Phillip Fulmer on Jeremy Pruitt: We don’t have a good football coach. We have a great football coach. A great football coach.

— Wes Rucker (@wesruckerTBA) February 6, 2020

There aren't many thing more important to Fulmer than Tennessee football.

And after watching the program hit rock bottom in 2017 under the guidance of Butch Jones and former athletic director John Currie, there's no way Fulmer is going to let it happen again.

Featured image via Jeremy Brevard-USA TODAY Sports