What Jeremy Pruitt said after Tennessee beat Charlotte

Tennessee limped through their homecoming matchup against Charlotte, leaning on the defense to squeak out a 14-3 win over the 49ers. It was ugly and the offense was virtually non-existent.

Here are the highlights from Jeremy Pruitt’s press conference after.

On the offensive struggles...

“Offensively we really struggled to moved the ball. You have to give Charlotte a lot of credit for that. Like I talked about earlier in the week, they give you a lot of different looks. We didn’t make any explosive plays and we struggled to be consistent and run the ball.”

On the struggling run game...

“You have to decide who you’re going to block. If there’s any indecisiveness there, then you’re probably in trouble. We didn’t do a very good job blocking. We’ve struggled to run the football all year, so I don’t know why this game would be much different. We tried to find ways to create the right numbers in the run game. But eventually it comes down to you have to this guy has to be able to take this guy and move him a little bit and you have to be able to hit the ball up in there and gain some yards. We didn’t do that today.”

On Ty Chandler...

“Ty is a little banged up. Really we looked at him as a game-time decision. He practiced one or two days this week. So just trying to get him back out there. If he could have played more he would have played more.”

On Alontae Taylor’s targeting call...

“I realize our officials have a tough job. I realize that. I’ve not seen the replay, have no idea if it was targeting or if it wasn’t. But I obviously don’t know what targeting is. Because I watched two games before I came over here, and they threw targeting flags, and once they replayed them, they weren’t targeting fouls. I would’ve said both of them were. So I obviously don’t know.”

On playing youth on defense...

“We’re just putting our best players on the field. Some of these guys, the longer they’re here, the more they’re going to gain knowledge of what we’re trying to get done. They’re going to have a better idea of what the expectations and standards are as far as how you practice, how you prepare. So they’re going to improve. I don’t know how any of them played today, but I know how they practiced.”

On Dominick Wood-Anderson...

“I think Dom has good ability. Some of the probably limitations on catching the ball early on is him knowing what to do. He wasn’t here in the spring. So when you go from, whether it’s high school or junior college and you go to the SEC, playing or practicing or whatever, it takes a little while to kind of get acclimated to the speed of the game, to the demands at practice, sometimes school. I think Dom is a really talented guy that has really improved a lot since he’s been here. He’s gotten to be a better blocker. He’s learned to run routes much better. So hopefully this can kind of be the beginning of him doing something on down the road.”