



TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — The familiar southern drawl is missed on the Alabama sideline, but it isn’t forgotten. The slow, friendly cadence of Jeremy Pruitt’s voice was absent during Alabama’s game prep this week, so was his father-like presence amongst the Crimson Tide defense.

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This week Pruitt is the enemy. For the first time since accepting the head coaching job at Tennessee more than 10 months ago, the former Alabama defensive coordinator will go up against the team he helped lead to back-to-back national championship games.

“Enemy” might be a strong word. Pruitt is this week’s obstacle, the man standing in front of the Crimson Tide’s tireless pursuit of perfection, a mindset he helped instill in this group of players. As outside linebacker Christian Miller put it, “Football is football.” Come Saturday, there’ll be no room for sentiment, only business.

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After all, that disciplined approach — plus a few southern quirks — is how Alabama players remember Pruitt.

“He used to always come into the meeting with his country slang. ‘Aight, guys. We can call one or two plays, and we’re going to go out there and execute and play some Alabama football,’” former Alabama linebacker Shaun Dion Hamilton said with an exaggerated twang in his voice. “We used to always joke about how country he was, but his country lingo never got old.”

Pruitt, a native of Rainsville, Ala., played two seasons as a defensive back for the Crimson Tide under former head coach Gene Stallings. His coaching career began in 1997 when he served as a graduate assistant at Alabama. After shooting up the ranks in Alabama’s high school scene, he drew the attention of then first-year Crimson Tide head coach Nick Saban, who brought him on as director of player development in 2007.

Pruitt spent the next six seasons as Saban’s assistant, becoming the defensive backs coach from 2010-12 before taking the defensive coordinator position at Florida State. After a year with the Seminoles and two more at the same position with Georgia, he returned to Alabama in 2016 as the Crimson Tide’s defensive/inside linebackers coach.

“What made him such a good coach was with him starting as a DB coach he always taught you something new,” Hamilton said. “He was such a great teacher. Going into my junior year, he taught me some DB skills from coverages to route combinations and all that kind of stuff. He really taught us to be like defensive backs from the linebacker position.”

Pruitt’s laid-back demeanor intensified on the practice field where he demanded constant perfection from his players. During meetings, he peppered his linebackers with scenarios, expecting players to know what he was going to call before the words left his mouth.

“He always used to say he was going to coach us hard,” Alabama linebacker Mack Wilson said. “We can do what we want to do off the field, we can chill, we can laugh, we can joke. But at practice, it’s business time, that’s no time to play.”

There’s also a time to love. Wilson still calls Pruitt a “father figure,” and texts his former coach to congratulate him after big wins. Following Tennessee’s 30-24 upset victory over Auburn last week, Hamilton also reached out to Pruitt, joking with him that he helped exact revenge over the Tigers after they beat Alabama in last year’s Iron Bowl. Hamilton, who currently plays for the Washington Redskins, said that after his NFL days are over he hopes to serve on Pruitt’s coaching staff one day.