Tennessee Vols coach Jeremy Pruitt achieves goal of following in dad's footsteps

Before Jeremy Pruitt worked for Nick Saban, he worked for his father.

Dale Pruitt’s oldest son was his assistant for five seasons.

Jeremy Pruitt wasn’t shy about offering ideas when he worked on his dad’s high school staffs in Alabama.

“He’s very respectful, but I think he’s not necessarily a yes-man,” Dale Pruitt said. “And any coach worth his salt don’t want yes-men. You can hire a robot to do that.”

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Jeremy’s penchant for offering ideas dates to his youth.

Jeremy and his dad remember an instance when Jeremy was in elementary school and his dad was in one of his first seasons coaching Plainview High School in Alabama. Dale's team wasn’t very good.

One night, Dale was reviewing game film with his assistant coaches. Jeremy was there, too. He enjoyed studying film with his father.

As Jeremy watched this film, he offered a critique.

Jeremy didn’t like the play calling. He told his dad and his assistants as much.

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Although that comment might not have been well-timed – “He wasn’t supposed to be making statements like that in front of adults,” Dale Pruitt said – it was an example of Jeremy’s mind working toward his goal.

“I knew at a very young age that’s what I wanted to do. I wanted to be like my dad,” Jeremy said.

He reached his goal.

Tennessee hired Pruitt on Dec. 7, making him a head coach for the first time.

A fieldhouse kid

Jeremy and his brother Luke were a regular presence around their dad’s program.

“Instead of me taking them fishing and hunting, I guess, they went with me to the fieldhouse,” Dale said.

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When Jeremy got to high school, Dale hesitated to play his son his freshman year. Finally, one of Dale’s assistants persuaded him to put Jeremy in the lineup. Jeremy played wingback and in the secondary. Plainview reached the state semifinals.

Jeremy went on to become Plainview’s quarterback and a two-time all-state safety.

Pruitt signed with Middle Tennessee State as a quarterback. In the preseason before Pruitt’s freshman year, MTSU’s coaching staff saw an opening for him to get on the field at safety. Pruitt flipped to the defensive side of the ball.

“We moved him over, and he never missed a beat,” former MTSU coach Boots Donnelly said.

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When MTSU opened the 1993 season – Pruitt’s freshman year – at Hawaii, Pruitt was on the field for the opening kickoff.

“Jeremy came into our place ready to play football. Nothing seemed to be too big for Jeremy,” Donnelly said. “He was pretty astute as far as what you do, how you go about doing it, and how much work it would require in order to be able to get on the field. He was as smart of a football player as a freshman that I’d ever coached.”

Headed to Alabama

Kelly Holcomb and some teammates were sitting in front of a dorm at MTSU after the 1994 season when Pruitt told them he was transferring after two years starting at safety.

“I’ve always dreamed of being part of the Crimson Tide,” Pruitt told Holcomb, as Holcomb recalls it. “I always grew up loving Alabama, and I just feel like that I’ve got to go do that.”

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Pruitt’s decision was based on more than a desire to play for his home state school

Pruitt played for different defensive backs coaches during his two seasons at MTSU. And after his sophomore season, there was scuttlebutt that Donnelly might replace Gerry DiNardo as Vanderbilt’s coach. If Donnelly departed, it could lead to a staff overhaul at MTSU.

“Jeremy called me and said, ‘Daddy, if Coach Donnelly is going to go to Vanderbilt, that means I’m going to have to play for my third DB coach,’” Dale Pruitt said. “He said, ‘If I’m going to play for three DB coaches, I want to choose which one it is.’

“I said, ‘Where do you want to play?’ He said, ‘I want to go to Alabama and play for Coach Oliver.’”

Bill Oliver was Alabama’s defensive coordinator. He’d watched Jeremy play at Plainview and monitored his career at MTSU.

Oliver thought Pruitt could help Alabama. Pruitt transferred in as a walk-on.

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“I didn’t think it was a gamble, and I wouldn’t have done it if I thought it was,” Oliver said. “I wouldn’t have done that to them.”

Pruitt played nickelback and dimeback for the Crimson Tide.

As it turned out, Donnelly did not become Vandy’s next coach, and Oliver left to become Auburn’s defensive coordinator after Pruitt’s junior season.

‘A whole lot like Dabo’

Oliver crossed paths with Pruitt while Pruitt was an assistant coach at Hoover High School in Alabama. Oliver had retired from coaching, and he went to talk shop with Hoover’s staff. Pruitt’s approach that day impressed Oliver.

“Every question he asked, it was a very good question,” Oliver said, “whereas I go to a lot of places and people ask certain things, and they don’t know what the hell they’re asking. If he asked something, he asked for a reason.”

That matched how Oliver and others remember Pruitt from his playing days. He had some talent, but his football IQ is what set him apart.

“Some people have knowledge of football, and others just play,” said Gene Stallings, Pruitt’s coach at Alabama in 1995 and ’96. “He was one of those guys who was brought up (in football). His daddy was a coach, and he had a knowledge of the game.”

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Pruitt reminded Stallings of another player he coached at Alabama in the 1990s.

“He was a whole lot like Dabo,” Stallings said.

That’s Dabo Swinney, whose Clemson Tigers won the national championship last season and are ranked No. 1 entering the College Football Playoff.

“I just remember how intelligent (Pruitt) was and how smart he was about the game,” said Holcomb, Pruitt’s teammate for two years at MTSU. “He knew his weaknesses, and he knew his strengths. And his weaknesses were, he wasn’t very fast. He wasn’t very big. But he was always in the right place, because he understood defense.”

Saban's teleprompter

The past five years, Pruitt has established himself as one of the nation’s best defensive coordinators at Florida State, Georgia and, most recently, Alabama.

But before Pruitt stewarded Saban’s defense, he was whispering names of high school coaches into Saban’s ear.

Pruitt broke into the Division I ranks in 2007, after Saban was hired to coach Alabama. None of Saban's assistants had Alabama roots.

Saban covered that front by making Pruitt his director of player development.

The move made sense on multiple levels. Pruitt had spent eight years as an assistant high school coach in Alabama, most recently at Hoover, a powerhouse program. So Pruitt could help introduce Saban to coaches around the state. Also, Hoover had Division I talent in its ranks. Having Pruitt on staff positioned the Tide well for landing Hoover’s talent.

“It was a perfect fit,” Dale Pruitt said.

When Saban made appearances, Pruitt tagged along to serve as his guide.

“Basically if they’re going to a clinic or they’re going somewhere, Jeremy walks with him, and when they’re meeting somebody, Jeremy will say under his breath before they get there, ‘Coach Saban, this is so and so,’ ” Dale Pruitt said.

‘Country as cornbread'

Tennessee’s program has a new catchword: Aight.

Pruitt uses the word as a verbal pause. He uttered his twangy “Aight” 44 times during his introductory press conference.

Pruitt added to his good-ol’-boy persona during a filming of “Two-A-Days,” an MTV reality show that chronicled Hoover football while Pruitt was an assistant there.

During one episode, Pruitt is dining with a player's parent, who is eating asparagus.

“What is that?” Pruitt asks.

He’s informed it’s asparagus, to which Pruitt responds: “I ain’t never heard of it.”

Dale Pruitt says his family laughs about that scene. Whether Jeremy, who was in his early 30s when that episode was filmed, truly didn’t recognize the vegetable, Dale can’t say. But he knows his son is no stranger to asparagus.

“Probably if you went into (Jeremy’s wife) Casey’s kitchen today, they probably have some asparagus in there, because he eats it,” Dale said.

At MTSU, Holcomb recalls teammates having fun with Pruitt’s Southern accent.

“You’d ask him where he’s from, and he’d say, ‘I’m from Raaaaiingsville, Alabama,’” Holcomb said.

That’s Rainsville, Alabama, Pruitt’s hometown of about 5,000 people located 60 miles southwest of Chattanooga.

“We’re both country as cornbread,” said Holcomb, who’s from southern Tennessee, “and he’s still that way.”