Spring football is the time when hope and good vibes supposed to spring eternal. The storylines are basically the same at all spring camps: Your QBs are trying really hard. Your strength coach is a total badass. Your facilities are looking great! Recruits are really buying in! Some encouraging stuff happened in your spring game, but you’ve got to keep working.

This should be a gimme at Tennessee. Vols fans are ravenous for football, and it’s almost impossible to be disappointed about a spring game if you just decide ahead of time that you’re not going to be disappointed about a spring game.

Especially for the first spring game after a wild coaching search that infuriated legions of their fans, it feels like it would’ve been really good for the Vols to project some optimism and happiness on Saturday. I wonder how that went.

Let’s get new coach Jeremy Pruitt’s thoughts on the day.

Here is one:

Here is another:

“You see some guys out there competing pretty hard. They may not being doing things perfect, but they’re headed in the right direction. And then I saw a couple of guys out there today just flat out quit. You call it what you want to, I’m gonna say they quit. That’s what I saw,” Pruitt said. “Look at the stat sheet. One team rushed for 134 yards and one team rushes for 14 yards. Is one team that much better? Nope. Is one team that much worse? Nope.”

It’s reassuring to see that things are off to a heartwarming start.