FSU article on the Jeremy Pruitt hire. The article questions if it is a good hire from a coaching stand point. They say his strength is recruiting.
Pruitt, 37, has been Alabama's defensive backs coach for the last two years -- his only two at the D1 level.
The hire is high risk, high reward.
Pruitt is a tremendous recruiter. He is young, connects well with kids, and owns lower Alabama and the Florida panhandle for the Crimson Tide. His track record as a recruiter is impeccable.
His track record as a coach, however, is another matter.
Pruitt played defensive back for Middle Tennessee and Alabama, and was a very good high school player. Most of his coaching experience is at the high school level, which he did for almost a decade until he was hired at Alabama in 2007.
Alabama picked him up as "director of player development," which isn't exactly a coaching position, but a position on staff that has some coaching-like duties. He was then promoted in 2010 to be Alabama's defensive back coach.
There are a couple of ways one can view the promotion.
One is that Saban has to trust Pruitt well enough to let him coach defensive backs.
Another view is that Saban is still very hands-on with the defensive backs, which are his specialty, as is Alabama defensive coordinator Kirby Smart, and that Pruitt might be on Alabama's staff to be a recruiter more than anything.
The truth is probably somewhere in the middle. Alabama's defenses have been great while Pruitt has been there, but also great before he arrived. And there is almost no way to separate the play of Alabama's defensive backs and attribute certain things to Pruitt and not Saban.
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