The Vols spent two hours in helmets and shorts and adhering to SEC Medical Task Force protocols. Third-year head coach Jeremy Pruitt‘s squad is scheduled to practice four times this week, including Wednesday, Friday and Saturday.

Below are quotes from Pruitt’s post practice media Zoom:

Head Coach Jeremy Pruitt Press Conference
2020 Fall Camp – Practice #1
Monday, Aug. 17

(Opening Statement)

“It’s great to be back out there on the field. It was really good for a lot of reasons. Our team has worked extremely hard since June 8 preparing for this opportunity. It was good to see them get out there and compete a little bit. It’s been a very unusual summer, obviously, and I have to give a lot of credit to our medical staff here, who have put a fantastic plan together to give us an opportunity to do this. This is the first practice during this pandemic, so there’s lot of things that we can learn from moving forward, so we’re going to continue to do that. The situation obviously changes daily, and we’ve got to do a great job as a staff following the protocols that Dr. (Chris) Klenck and Jeronimo (Boche) have put together.

“When it comes to football, it was exciting to see some of these guys run around out there and lots of things that we can improve on. Just a couple of updates from a roster standpoint, Baylen Buchanan is going to sit out this season based off of a medical issue that he’s continued to work on. He’s shown a lot of improvement there and he’s going to continue to work hard to get better there, but he’s not going to play this season. Jeremy Banks practiced with us today. Jeremy has done a fantastic job over the last nine months. He’s really been an inspiration to me. For 20 minutes last year, (those are) 20 minutes Jeremy would love to have back. When we removed him from the football team, he didn’t want to leave. He said coach, ‘I came to Tennessee to get a degree. I’ve embarrassed myself, my family, and the only way that I can get that back is staying here and that’s something that I would like to do.’ We put a plan in place, and he’s followed everything that we’ve asked him to do. I’m proud of him, where’s he’s at, making A’s and B’s, and really getting involved in the community. So we’re excited that he’s back and we’re looking forward to him getting a second chance.”

(On Cade Mays’ eligibility)

“So we do have an update with Cade. We obviously applied for a waiver for initial eligibility here. It was denied. We’re in the process of appealing that. For me, it is frustrating as it is for Cade. Just looking at it for his sake – I think he was a really good player at Georgia. I don’t know how he did there, but from playing against him, I thought he was one of the better players in the league. I thought he played the right way. The circumstances surrounding him and his family are something he had no control over. When you look at a young man, once he transfers, going through the process of if he’s going to be eligible, there’s a lot that goes into that. He’s sitting there with this case looming. Does that affect where he goes on the depth chart? Does that affect anything that goes on around him? It’s an unusual circumstance.

“You guys know me. I’m a transfer myself. There’s a period of about 10 weeks where I didn’t know whether or not that I was going to be eligible. I thought about those 10 weeks when we got this denial. It’s just a lot of uncertainty there. I hate it for him. I hate it for every young man and woman out there that wants to transfer. I’m in favor of the one-time transfer. My question is, ‘Why should we stand in the way of a young man or woman trying to figure out what the right place for them is?’ Right now that’s not the rule. I hope that eventually that will be the rule. I know for everybody that has transferred from our place, I have written a letter for recommendation to the NCAA that requested they be approved for immediate eligibility. So I know it’s frustrating for Cade. It’s frustrating for our team.”

(On how many players have tested positive for COVID-19 since returning in June)

“We’ve had a total of 23 guys on our team test positive (since June). The first time we tested, we had zero. Over the period of time we’ve been back, we’ve had 23 total. There were lots of lessons for us to learn in there. We gave our guys an eight-day break around the Fourth of July, so they had a chance to go home. That was the point in time where we thought the season was going to start on time, so we wanted to give them a chance to be able to spend time with their family. We had some guys come back and tested positive.

“Our positivity rate is slightly under 2 percent (since weekly screenings began), so Dr. (Chris) Klenck and our guys have really done a nice job of exercising the protocol we have in place here and we’ve learned a lot of lessons from our team. There’s not been any contact tracing that’s been within our building. It’s all come from outside. We’ve got to do a better job when we’re out and about in public. It’s something we learned right after the Fourth of July.”

(On if any players missed the first day of practice because of COVID-19)

“We had a few guys that are in quarantine right now that will be back here in a couple of days.”

(On Jarrett Guarantano and the quarterbacks)

“I thought all of our quarterbacks threw the ball well today, so there were several periods in there that we completed a whole lot of balls, which was good to see. It’s good to see guys creating some yards after the catch there. We have to be more consistent at that position obviously, but that’s whoever’s playing quarterback. But hey, that’s our entire team. If you want to be successful in this league you have to create consistency on both sides of the ball and that’s something we have to work hard to do during this camp.”

(On how the first day of camp felt with the new protocols in place because of COVID-19)

“We’ve been very transparent with our team. We’ve met as a team. We’ve met with the leadership group. We’ve had our medical task force team in here that have met with our players and parents. The one thing we wanted to be is transparent so our guys understood what the risk were going into this summer and starting camp.

“One thing, getting on the practice field to me it looked like the first day of practice I’ve seen over the last 20 years. I see a lot of guys that are excited, guys flying around, guys making mistakes going at full speed. I saw a lot of guys that were excited about being out on the field. To speak with them about how they feel, is something y’all (media) get an opportunity to do. It’s not about how I feel as much. To me, it’s about them. That’s something that we tried to make sure our young men understand. We’ve told everybody that we will fully support them if they want to play or fully support them if they don’t want to play. That’s something we’re going to do here, is provide all the information to help them make the decision.”

(On how he thinks the team will handle itself away from team activities)

“It’s going to be hard for me to enforce it, I don’t live with them 24 hours a day. I do believe from an educational standpoint, Dr. (Chris) Klenck and Jeronimo (Boche) have done an outstanding job educating them on how the disease is transmitted. So our kids do understand, and it comes down to decision making. I can tell you this, this summer I wanted to go see my mom and dad. I have (extended) family members that are not social distancing that are playing sports, whereas our family is trying to do that to help protect the players around. So it’s just decisions we have to make. I ask my family to wear masks at times. I guess it changes with each individual person.”

(On opening the season at South Carolina)

“It’s a long time until we play South Carolina. We have lots of things that we need to fix here at Tennessee and we have 24 more practices to help develop our team, and we have to work hard to do that. We’ll start focusing on South Carolina as we get closer to that time, but to speak on them, Coach (Will) Muschamp to me has always done a fantastic job. He’s one of the best defensive coaches in college football. He’s hired Mike Bobo to be his offensive coordinator, who’s a good friend of mine and I think is one of the best guys across the country. I know that they have a talented roster, but right now we need to focus on us.”

(On the difficulty of an SEC-only schedule)

“The unique thing about our league is that anybody can beat anybody any week, so it will be a tough 10 games. You have to be prepared every week, you have to be at your best every week. You have to sustain and stay healthy. Obviously, this will be the first time that any of us have ever experienced it. It’ll be a great challenge and something that we’re looking forward to.”

(On OTAs helping with newcomers getting acclimated leading up to practices starting)

“I would say absolutely it helped. We really took advantage of our walk-throughs. There’s a lot of teaching that goes on there, so we had the chance to go through a lot of our teaching progression. We kind of go with a five-day install and then start back over, so it’s been really good. We changed the way we practiced a little bit today just because we’ve had so many walk-throughs, but it’s something we took advantage of for sure.”

(On if Baylen’s Buchanan’s injury is career-ending)

“No. First of all, I’m not the doctor, but it’s something that he’s working hard to rehab with, and he’ll continue to do that.”

(On which players have stepped up as leaders in following new safety protocols)

“I think there’s no doubt that anybody that’s associated with football absolutely wants to play. I do believe that everybody is also very cognitive of the fact that there is a risk. It’s something that we’ve all tried to work together on, and we’ll continue to do that. I’m sure that over the course of the season, the CDC guidelines will probably change. They’ve changed in the last six to eight weeks a little bit, and we’ve made sure that we’ve followed them. So we’ll continue to do that. But it’s something that we have to work on together, so I can’t just pick out one person. I think it’s something that we’re all trying to do.”

(On Jeremy Banks adding versatility to the defense from multiple positions)

“We’re working him at MONEY. It’s a position that he moved to last year and he has a lot of catching up to do. I’m just excited that he’s put himself in a position to get the opportunity to be able to do this. It’s a great opportunity for him to further his education. I believe that Jeremy will work really hard to become the best football player that he can be.”

(On how Jeremy Banks was able to work his way back onto the roster)

“I don’t want to go into specifics on what exactly the plan was, but I can tell you this: Jeremy has worked tirelessly to put himself into position to get back on our football team. There’s been a lot of people in the surrounding area from Knoxville that have contributed to that. Jeremy has learned a valuable lesson and he gets an opportunity to play football again and continue his degree.”

(On the incoming freshmen)

“I think there is lots of talent amongst the group. The guys really love football, they’ve worked hard preparing to get themselves a chance to compete for playing time this year. We need a lot of these guys to be playmakers for us on both sides of the ball. It’s the first day of practice, we’ve kind of had some walk-throughs but today was really the first day to judge them out there and it is hard to do that on the first day. There are lots of guys that have lots of ability that will be good football players here.”

(On testing schedule and how camp will be different from a “more normal year”)

“Well from a football practice standpoint we get 25 practices, which is exactly what we normally get in any fall camp. The difference is that it is spread out more days, which I think is really good. It gives us a chance to practice a day and take a day off and get these guys back into football shape a little bit. Our testing protocol: we are testing once a week and as the season gets here, we’ll test twice. But if anybody has any symptoms, they get tested. Really, Dr. (Chris) Klenck would be the best guy to talk to about that. I feel really confident in our medical team in what they are doing to provide safety measures for not only our players, but our staff and everybody associated with the program.”

(On today’s practice and the SEC schedule being announced)

“Well, one thing we’ve been focusing on is what we can control. We’ve been preparing all along like there is going to be a season. Today was the first practice and our guys were prepared to go for that first practice. I thought we had a really good practice. That’s all we can do. We don’t make these decisions; we try to provide all the protection we can for our players. I’ll tell you, one of the things that has concerned me the most is just the mental health when these guys were stuck at home. What we consider a normal schedule while they’re in school is not normal at home. We all know, we’ve been stuck at home, right? When you have to look after your own kids or maybe their little brothers or sisters or maybe their cousins while they’re supposed to be taking classes. One thing that we learned really early on is that we needed to be able to be fluid with our scheduling to accommodate things that change every day for them at home. This has been a big undertaking that we are all working really hard to find the answers and we are going to continue to do that.”

(On Jimmy Holiday)

“Jimmy is going to play wide receiver this fall. It is something that he wanted to do, he felt like he would have an opportunity to get on the field faster there. He is a guy that you obviously can jump in at quarterback, and he’s still taking some snaps there. He is going to take most of his snaps at the wide receiver position this fall.”

(On the new coaching staff)

“I feel like our staff has really done an outstanding job handling this whole pandemic. The No. 1 priority with us has been our relationships with our players. These guys went home in the middle of March and they didn’t get back until June 8, and not all of them got back on June 8 some of them got back in July. Going from seeing these guys every single day to not being able to see them has been tough. Luckily with Zoom and Facetime we tried to have as many face-to-face meetings with our players as we possibly could to be there for them. Like I said, things change every single day and it has since March. I think our guys have really responded in a positive way – our players, our coaches. I’m excited about the men that are on our staff. I believe in them; I know where their hearts are at and I am excited about the relationships they continue to build with our players. They all have the ability to be really good coaches.”

(On what he’s seen from Velus Jones Jr. and how important OTAs were for Quavaris Crouch)

“Well, you’re talking about three practices. Velus is a guy that I knew in high school, he was from Mobile, (Alabama), a guy that we recruited some. He’s a fast guy, really good kick returner, has great speed, has a feel to play the position, has a lot of experience, so when he wanted to transfer and graduated (he) reached out to us. With his connection with Tee (Martin), it was a really good fit for us.

“Q (Quavaris Crouch), I don’t know how many touches he’ll get on the goal line. He’s moved to inside linebacker, which is probably his most natural position, he has ability to rush on third down, so it’s one of those deals. Last year, he played inside and outside, predominantly outside, but we like to recruit guys that can play all four positions and he’s a guy that fits that mold. We’ll see about the goal line as we get closer to the season.”

(On if he thinks it’ll be easier for freshmen to play due to the longer preseason format)

“Well the OTAs were not six or seven weeks of fall camp. It was not that way. We pushed back a little bit after the Fourth of July. We could do walk-throughs and I think the walk-through part, the teaching part, was really, really good for these guys, but we’re not allowed to go out there and practice. But the walk throughs, I thought, were really good. It gave them an opportunity to slow down and I feel like we have really good teachers in our building, so there’s no doubt that it should create an advantage for these guys. It was good for everybody. It was good for the coaches too.”

(On if he knows what percentage of the players classes are slated to be online)

“Our format here this fall is hybrid, so some of the classes are online, some of the classes are in person and some of them are both. I don’t know exactly the number that we have that are online or hybrid or in person, but what I do know is that Chancellor (Donde) Plowman is taking every step that she can to provide safety for not only our student-athletes but for the student body. Again, it’s something that we’ve all got to work hard together to do.”

(On still playing football if the university if forced to go to fully online classes)

“My whole thing the whole time is, can we protect our players? It’s the most important thing. I don’t know the angle here. I can tell you, as a coach, the No. 1 concern for us is the safety of everybody in this building. Do we want to play? Absolutely. We want to play. The kids want to play. But, the No. 1 thing for us is to make sure that we can protect the people around us and that will never change. That will never ever change. It’s the way we practice. It’s the first thing we think of with any decision that’s made with anybody in our program. What’s the safety? That’s during this pandemic and that was before this pandemic, so that’s not ever going to change here.”

-UT Athletics

Here’s footage made available to us by VFL Films and UT Athletics from Fall Practice 1 on August 17, 2020.