Jeremy Pruitt says not having an offensive coordinator in place didn’t affect recruiting

Tennessee head coach Jeremy Pruitt faced the media after day one of the early signing period on Wednesday afternoon. Of course, it was the first opportunity the media had to grill him on his offensive coordinator opening too. However, Pruitt wasn’t too interested in getting into those details, as you may have expected.

“I’d rather talk about recruiting right now,” Pruitt said. “The offensive coordinator sometimes is overrated. There’s some of these teams that it doesn’t matter who the offensive coordinator is, based off talent or lack there of. The most important thing right now is recruiting. We’ll worry about that later.”

Tennessee has seemingly cycled through a few candidates over the last couple of weeks. Hugh Freeze, Dan Enos, Chip Lindsey, Mike Yurcich and Kendal Briles are just some of the names that have reportedly been connected to the job at this point.

Pruitt has reportedly put the search on hold for now, as he completes the early signing period. According to him, it hasn’t affected his ability to pull in top players on the recruiting trail.

“I think nowadays, coaches, they change a lot,” Pruitt said. “You’re usually recruiting to the head football coach. There was never an issue there. We put Shelton Felton on the road. Shelton’s a guy that was a high school coach in the state of Georgia, he’s done it before — he was at UTC. So he’s got experience and we thought that was a really good fit.”

For what it’s worth, Tennessee secured everyone they were supposed to lock up today. They’ve also picked up a commitment from four-star quarterback Harrison Bailey without having an offensive coordinator in place.

That search should pick up in a big way by the weekend, if not before.