Tennessee Director of Athletics Phillip Fulmer appeared on the radio show “Vol Calls” Wednesday.
Fulmer provided his support for third-year Vols’ head coach Jeremy Pruitt. Fulmer hired Pruitt in Dec. 2017.
Pruitt is 15-17 during three seasons at Tennessee with one bowl victory.
Tennessee (2-5, 2-5 SEC) will play Florida, Texas A&M and Vanderbilt to conclude the 2020 regular season.
“The coaches right now are fully focused on the three games that we have left and with Florida coming into town,” Fulmer said on “Vol Calls.” “It’s always a tough game, but if we play really hard and take care of the ball better and get the ball back some, I think anything can happen.
“They’re a good, good football team, but as you said, as an athletic director I have the responsibility to lead the program and look it over and evaluate it and the progress that we’re making or not making. I have to really look at it from a big picture, and realistically, and not emotionally.”
Fulmer served as Johnny Majors’ offensive line coach from 1980-88. Majors’ first season as head coach at Tennessee came in 1977, and through his first 30 games he was 14-15-1.
“I had the experience of being part of Coach Majors’ staff in the early 80s, and the programs are kind of in a similar place,” Fulmer said in comparing Majors and Pruitt. “It took Coach (Majors) into his fourth and fifth year to get things turned around, and right now everybody wished that it would happen quicker in the process.”
Fulmer mentioned Tennessee is “a better football team than our record has shown.”
“Team plays hard and I think the Auburn game was a good example of that, but we’re not taking care of the ball and protecting it like we should, and we certainly haven’t gotten the takeaways that you would think a normal aggressive defense would get,” Fulmer said. “Giving great effort and taking care of the ball and getting the ball back are three of the things that you have to do to have a good team, and it’s not one particular group all the time. It’s just we’ve had a very inconsistent group and a lot of that is coming from youth.
“Coach Pruitt’s said it a bunch of times, we’ve offensively and defensively, just can’t have those catastrophic plays that we’ve had, that have cost us games.”
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