Should Tennessee fire Jeremy Pruitt and go all-in on Hugh Freeze?

Tennessee football is floundering with Jeremy Pruitt at the helm, but trading him for Hugh Freeze would be a giant risk for the Volunteers. 

Jeremy Pruitt’s five-game losing streak has Tennessee fans up in arms about his potential future in Knoxville. Hugh Freeze’s redemption at the helm of Liberty’s program is only turning up the heat.

It’s only natural to consider whether or not Tennessee Athletic Director Phillip Fulmer would consider making such a seismic shift for his school’s flagship program. He is a former football coach who piloted the program to a national title. Tennessee’s inability to beat the likes of Kentucky and Arkansas this season is a clear signal they are miles away from reaching those heights anytime soon.

The idea of hiring Pruitt was that he could instill a meaningful sense of disciple in a program that had lost its way under Butch Jones. The former Alabama assistant certainly speaks like a coach who wants to build the Volunteers into a program that relies on toughness and physicality to dominate the SEC East. Unfortunately for Pruitt, nothing about the way his team has played this season makes it look like his philosophies are taking hold.

Is Jeremy Pruitt the right guy to rebuild Tennessee football?

Pruitt is simply too conservative to lead a program like Tennessee. The lack of talent inside the state of Tennessee makes it impossible for the Volunteers to secure enough talent to be nationally relevant without finding a way to bring in elite, out-of-state recruits on an annual basis.

That means Tennessee needs to find a way to differentiate itself from its brethren in the SEC. Trying to do the same thing that Alabama or Georgia does is not going to work. The program has to do something different if it wants to win those high-profile recruiting battles on a regular basis.

Doing something unconventional on the field would also help Tennessee overcome a potential talent gap against its competitors inside the league. Pruitt is not willing to install any type of innovative system on either side of the football. He and his program are too vanilla to help Tennessee win more games than their program should on a regular basis.

Would Hugh Freeze be an upgrade?

It’s pretty clear that Freeze has the sort of personality and, more importantly, the aggressive offensive system required to breathe life into the Tennessee program. He built Ole Miss into a legitimate national power before losing control of his personal life in Oxford. That’s a program with more inherent disadvantages than Tennessee. Simply put, the Volunteers have an easier job than the Rebels.

Freeze’s work on the field at Liberty shouldn’t really surprise anyone. The Flames program has tremendous facilities and a massive budget compared to its peers. His success in Lynchburg was always the likely outcome for Freeze if he solved his off-the-field issues.

That doesn’t mean he’s the right hire for Tennessee

The one thing Tennessee got right with the Pruitt hire is that they secured a head coach who focused attention back onto the field of play. For all of his warts, Pruitt doesn’t present any problems off the field of play.

Freeze is too much like Lane Kiffin to be the ideal coach to usher in a new era of glory for Tennessee football. Hiring him would be a major national story for a program that should want to avoid that sort of attention.

Instead of hiring an established retread like Kiffin, Tennessee should be looking for a young, innovative offensive mind that can breathe life into their moribund program. Freeze has too much baggage to be the right guy.