Tennessee head coach Jeremy Pruitt knows that he needs to make the right decision about which quarterback to trot out onto the field this fall, but he also knows the decision needs to be made quickly.
At the podium during his main room appearance at SEC Media Days this morning, Pruitt said that each of the four quarterbacks he’ll have at his disposal this fall is going to get a chance to earn playing time.
“We have two young men, Jarrett [Guarantano] and Will [McBride] that were there in the spring,” Pruitt said. “They’ll have 15 practices under their belt. We add Keller Chryst coming from Stanford who has played football there, has experience. And we are adding another young man from California, J.T. Shrout. We’ll give those guys opportunities in fall camp.”
Despite everyone getting a chance, conventional wisdom suggests that the quarterback competition is going to come down to Guarantano and Chryst. Guarantano redshirted in 2016 and then threw for 997 yards and 4 touchdowns with 2 interceptions in 6 starts and 9 games played last season. Like Guarantano, Chryst redshirted as a freshman at Stanford. He then played in four games as a sophomore and 12 games as a junior last season, going 5-2 as the starter before losing the job to K.J. Costello. He threw for 962 yards and 8 touchdowns. Guarantano has an edge in the form of having a spring with Pruitt already under his belt, while Chryst may have an edge by being more of a true pro-style quarterback to fit into Tyson Helton’s offensive system.
McBride and Shrout may well be good prospects, but they simply don’t have the experience that the other two do. In filling in for an injured Guarantano last season, McBride threw for 152 yards and a touchdown with 2 interceptions, and he rushed 18 times for 70 yards. Incoming 3-star pro-style quarterback JT Shrout reportedly held his own at a QB camp last summer against some elite competition, including 5-star Georgia signee Justin Fields, the top dual-threat quarterback in the class, but Shrout is still just a true freshman.
Whichever guy is going to win the starting job this fall is going to have to do so quickly, as Pruitt also said that he is aware of the need to make an early decision for the sake of getting that guy ready to play.
“I think for us seeing what these other two new guys can do,” Pruitt said, “along with what the guys, see how they progress in fall camp, I think it’s going to be important for us as a staff to start whittling it down pretty fast so we can kind of create rhythm and timing and a little bit of chemistry on offense and figure out who our guys are going to be.”
Pruitt said earlier this year that he may not know which quarterback was going to start until the fourth quarter of the first game, and by that he may have just meant that you don’t really know how good a guy is until you see him in live action with the game on the line. But by his statement today, don’t expect him to draw out the quarterback competition this fall any longer than is absolutely necessary.