Midweek Updates

Photo Credit: Andrew Ferguson/Tennessee Athletics

This week, we examine a possible position change for the Vols, as well as a preview of Tennessee’s upcoming matchup with South Carolina and Jeremy Pruitt’s press conference from Monday.

Jeremy Banks Practices As a Linebacker

This week, running back Jeremy Banks began transitioning to the linebacker position. Earlier this season, I became very excited about Banks' potential, but he has not received as much playing time as I thought he would. It will be interesting to see how the move works out, because he is a very physical, hard-hitting player. Banks should make an immediate impact at linebacker and I am very excited to see him on the defensive side on the ball.

Tennessee Travels To Columbia To Play South Carolina

The Vols face South Carolina in a road, primetime game. The atmosphere inside of Williams-Brice Stadium is always chaotic at night, so it will be of upmost importance that Tennessee gets off to a fast start. With the uncertainty surrounding Guarantano's health and how he will perform, I have a gut feeling that he will have a amazing performance that will be remembered for years, just as former Vol Josh Dobbs did at South Carolina in 2014. It will be huge if Pruitt can pick up this win.

Pruitt's Monday Press Conference

Coach Pruitt opened his weekly press conference with the following statement. "Looking back at this week's game, we had a lot of guys that played really hard. Unfortunately, we didn't play very well as a unit in any phase. We did create some explosive plays offensively, but we couldn't run the ball again this week. If we're going to improve offensively moving forward, we're going to have to be able to run the football and still be able to create some explosive plays. On the reverse side, defensively, we didn't tackle very well. We had lots of busts on defense, which is kind of uncharacteristic since the opening game. We have to go back this week and improve, improve tackling. We have to create an edge on special teams. When you look at South Carolina, all of Coach Muschamp's teams have always been well coached, they're physical, they play hard. They're opening it up offensively and they're spreading the ball around. They've got good wide receivers, good runners. They play hard on defense and they get off the field on third down, so we've got a tremendous challenge this week. I think it's a great opportunity for us. It's a hard place to win, in Columbia, especially at night. It's a tremendous challenge for our team moving forward."

One of the biggest questions this week focuses on the Vols' quarterback situation. Guarantano left the game against Alabama on Saturday after taking a big hit, but Pruitt is confident that he will play against South Carolina. Pruitt said, "I think Jarrett's going to be fine. He took a pretty good shot. He took a couple pretty good shots. He's a tough guy and I expect him to be out there."

While acknowledging that Alabama is good at forcing their opponents into mistakes, Pruitt believes that many of them were unforced, mental errors. He said, "We made a lot of mistakes. They were unforced errors, to me. I said it after the game and I said it at halftime. We have a lot of guys that try to compete and play to the standard and expectations, but unfortunately, you have 11 guys out there and it takes all 11. Even the guys that are trying to do it the right way, they're not going to win every battle. That's part of it. You have to give yourself a chance and it's unfortunate for some of the guys in our program that do it right all the time. If we don't get everybody else to do it, nobody knows how hard they actually play."