Butch Jones on Jarrett Guarantano: “He’s a good teammate.”

After an offseason of total uncertainty at the quarterback position, I think most of the fanbase expected to at least get a glimpse of the highly touted Jarrett Guarantano. Tennessee head coach Butch Jones teased a two quarterback system, but Quinten Dormady was the only one to see snaps against Georgia Tech in the opener.

Twitter was abuzz during Monday night’s game, reacting to what appeared to be some questionable body language from Jarrett Guarantano on the sideline following a Tennessee touchdown.

It was hard not to notice, but I still don’t think it’s as big of a deal as some are making it out to be. Butch Jones addressed the issue during his press conference on Wednesday.

“Jarrett’s a good teammate,” Jones said. “He’s a competitor and he wants to be in there. He has a tremendous amount of respect for everyone in this program.”

“I think we’ve found out in college football after week one that you’re always one snap away from being in the football game,” Jones said. Dormady went 20-37 for 221 yards and two touchdowns against the Yellow Jackets.

“Quinten went through the same thing in his process behind Josh. You’re antsy, you’re ready to play, you have some anxiety — but again we always tell them you’re one snap away.”

Jones pointed again to the flow of the game as a reason why you saw only Dormady.

“Like we talked about last week, the nuances of this game would be completely different. Our possessions would be limited. Then all of the sudden we have a couple of receivers go down, then we have a couple of offensive lineman go down.”

It seemed like Butch didn’t want to rock the boat anymore than he had to, which does seem like the smart thing to do with how the game developed. I’d guess we see plenty of Guarantano against a lesser opponent in Indiana State this week.

The two quarterbacks are still listed as co-starters on the Tennessee two-deep depth chart. I think this is less of a story than most think it is, but it’s at least become big enough for Butch Jones to address it.

We’ll see how things play out against Indiana State this Saturday.