Just start mentally preparing yourself to lose to Vanderbilt this year.
Welcome back to Rock M Nation’s annual opponent preview series of the upcoming season. Each week we will break down one opponent from the schedule in chronological order. Given that rosters are ever fluid – and this is done by a hobbyist rather than a pro – there could be some errors in history and current roster makeup. All mistakes are done on purpose and with ill intent because I don’t like you or your team.
Catch up on previous 2025 opponent previews!
Last year I discussed Vanderbilt in terms of feeling bad for them as a fanbase, with this gem accentuating that pathos:
Imagine having Gary Pinkel’s 2009 team and Barry Odom’s 2017 squad being the highest points of your favorite football program during your lifetime, and then surround that with multiple iterations of Larry Smith’s 2000 teams and Gary Pinkel’s 2001 team…and then six seasons worse than that. Over a nearly 20-year run.
Would you stop caring about college football? I feel like that could happen to me if I had to watch this quality of college football every fall Saturday.
And while I’m certainly not shedding tears for the innumerable doctors and lawyers that choose to witness the football incompetence of Nashville’s largest private university, I do wish the school would find a way to do enough to, ya know, at least make them somewhat competitive in the SEC.
Ask and ye shall receive, huh?
It turns out, if you’re a struggling program and decide to hire Jerry Kill and then dub Diego Pavia as your starting quarterback, you’re going to start turning things around very quickly!
Here’s what Vanderbilt did last year:
A year after going 1-1 in their only two one-score games, the Commodores found themselves in a whopping eight (8!) one-score games, once again splitting the finishes at .500, going 4-4.
But what a difference that made! Instead of getting blown out eight times in a season the ‘Dores had the ability to win an individual game in all but two of their matchups, and those two were…
- A 17-point loss to the red-hot South Carolina Gamecocks, and…
- A 13-point defeat at the hands of Playoff-participant Tennessee.
In one year Vandy went from fading doormat to uber-competitive spoiler team, and while its overtly reductive to credit that to Jerry Kill and Diego Pavia…yeah, it’s basically their talents that made that transition occur.
And they’re both back! As is most of last year’s Commodore team.
Look out world!
Coaching Staff
Photo by Brandon Sumrall/Getty Images
Clark Lea – 5th Year – 16-33 (5-27)
Every year I’ll tell you that Vanderbilt is the best job in the country. Why?
- Low expectations
- SEC salary
- General malaise from student body and alumni base, especially compared to the SEC
And that’s while going 2-10 twice in three years! Still the best job, no doubt about it.
So what happens when you win 7 games for only the 4th time since 1983, attend the school’s seventh bowl game of this millennium, and oh-by-the-way win the program’s fifth bowl game ever?
Are there expectations now in Nashville’s premier private university? Unclear to this outsider but there is certainly an energy around the program that hasn’t been there since the James Franklin days. If Clark Lea can produce only the 12th instance ever of a Vanderbilt football team completing two consecutive seasons with at least 7 wins in back-to-back years in the program’s 134-year history, what other potential aspirations will the hometown hero hanker for at that point?
Assistant Staff
No changes of names to the assistant roster, just a shuffling of titles as Steve Gregory moves over from “consultant to split-head-coach-slash-defensive-coordinator Clark Lea” to the much simpler title of “defensive coordinator”. This is one of the rare staffs that has maintained 100% cohesion from last year, which is even more impressive accomplishment when you consider how coaches usually bolt for higher paying gigs after an impactful season at a particular school.
Roster Movement
Vanderbilt lost 20 players to the portal, but only one player who contributed on any significant level, offensive tackle Gunnar Hansen. Everyone else on this list were either depth pieces or younger backups who saw a crowded depth chart to climb, including the rare incoming-freshman-who-enrolls-early-and-then-transfers in George Okorie. A notable amount of these transfers were guys who portalled in last year and then were beat out by other transfers, like quarterback Nate Johnson and tight end Tyler Fortenberry.
Vanderbilt went about as hard as you could go into portalling linemen, finishing with seven incoming offensive linemen and six incoming defensive linemen. That’s 13 players along the lines out of a 20 man portal class! I’m most excited to see what Washburn-transfer Tre Richardson can do, but more on him later.
On account of spending a ton of money in keeping your starting roster in Nashville – as well as having to deal with the nasty issue of being “historically bad Vanderbilt” – the Commodores high school recruiting efforts were mid at best on the national level and the absolute worst in the SEC. There’s some interesting pieces among this group, including four-star Austin Howard and high 3-star safety Davin Chandler, but given Vandy’s current stacked returning numbers it’s doubtful these guys get much of a look this year.
Offense
Vanderbilt’s first offense under Tim Beck was good, but certainly not great. They stunk at running the ball (93rd) and were neither efficient (75th) nor explosive (124th).
What they did do well, however, was let Diego Pavia do…whatever it is that he does. And while its’ hard to quantify what he specifically adds from a statistical standpoint, one can see that Vanderbilt became elite in taking advantage of the opportunities they had. For instance, they ranked…
- 18th in starting field position
- 25th in points per scoring opportunity
- 22nd in redzone touchdown rate
- 8th in goal-to-go touchdown rate
- 32nd in expected turnovers
- 1st in actual turnovers
They found ways to get into scoring position, get seven points, and rarely (if ever) turned it over. And, sometimes, that’s all you need.
Quarterback
Photo by Brandon Sumrall/Getty Images
I don’t know how he does it but all Diego Pavia does is win at places that are absolute junkyards of college football relevance. He won a national championship at New Mexico Military Academy, helped lead New Mexico State to 10 wins with victories over Liberty and Auburn, and now is upsetting top five opponents at Vanderbilt. He’s not all that impressive in how he looks or how he plays, he just finds a way to keep his team in it to the end and pull out a victory late.
I mean…look at his stats above. Good, but certainly not great. He’s just one of those sawed-off shit-talkers that eludes statistical analysis and lands squarely into the “he’s got it” fraternity of college football players.
I don’t know what “it” is. But he has it. And it works.
So much so that he sued the NCAA for violating the Sherman Antitrust Act for counting redshirts and years spent at junior college as part of your eligibility clock – a truly absurd lawsuit to file, mind you – and he even won that.
The man is unstoppable.
Running Back
Photo by Chris Putman/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images
Pavia is also Vanderbilt’s leading returning rusher but running back Sedrick Alexander came in second on the team and was the #1 running back for the Commodores last year. Alexander didn’t do much with his 164 carries but did manage nearly 600 yards and six touchdowns on 3.6 yards per carry. He wasn’t much in terms of breaking tackles, making guys miss, or running through contact; but similar to his quarterback, he just…made good things happen, winding up with barely 15% of his carries go for zero or negative yards. A.J. Newberry and Chase Gillespie return as well.
Receivers
Washburn athletics
While the Vanderbilt passing game wasn’t the most impressive (or explosive) thing in the world, they do return seven of their top nine targets, including their best in quarterback-turned-tight-end Eli Stowers and receiver Junior Sherrill.
The big thing here, to me at least, is the addition of D-II star Tre Richardson out of Washburn.
Not only because Washburn’s mascot is the Ichabods – you’ll notice in that pic up there they shorten it to “Bods” which is just fantastic – but because Richardson was a D-II Jeremy Maclin.
Haul in nearly 1,000 yards in passes? Run for more than 200 yards? Return kicks for nearly 400 yards? Yup, Richardson can do it all.
And while I don’t know how Vandy wants to use him, having an electric athlete like that whom they can deploy anywhere on the field presents some very exciting possibilities for an offense that was in need of a jolt outside of Pavia.
Offensive Line
Photo by Ross Harried/NurPhoto via Getty Images
Vanderbilt doesn’t lose much from last year’s squad but the starters they did lose were almost all along the line, with three exhausting their eligibility and one hitting the portal. So Vandy responded by bringing in seven options from across the world of college football in hopes that they can find at least three to fill out the obvious gaps. South Dakota’s Bryce Henderson is a particularly shiny diamond in the rough, one who is projected to be an excellent tackle for the Commodores this fall after a sterling career for the Playoff-experienced Coyotes.
Defense
It’s fun to have your thoughts written down on the internet for everyone to see for all eternity. Mostly when you’re right! Because there are definitely times when you are wrong and you get to see it forever.
For example! Here’s what I said about Vanderbilt’s defense being lead by Head Coach Clark Lea last year:
Look…we’ve seen what happens when a college head football coach tries to be a coordinator, too. But Lea already has a general manager and a director of player personnel taking care of the non-football stuff for him so, yeah, sure, maybe this works out.
…I’d bank on it not working out. For the record.
Lmao what an idiot I am.
The three seasons before Lea took over defensive coordinator duties, the Commodore defense ranked 115th, 94th, and 124th in defensive SP+.
Last year’s defense ranked 59th.
Now, they were far from elite or even great. They got pushed around against the run and were one of the worst pass defenses in the entire FBS. But what they excelled at was limiting big plays and making college offenses be college offenses and make a few screw ups during a 12 or 13-play drive.
The Commodore defense benefitted from the 4th-best average starting field position as well as the 18th-best turnover margin in the country. The linebackers were also a Top 20 havoc unit in the nation and their back seven benefitted from the 4th-best Pass Deflection percentage on the year.
And they lose very little from last year’s group while adding an actual DC who is not their HC, plus some young and talented additions from the portal. The potential for Vandy to deploy a super nasty defense this year is high. Very high.
So what does it all mean?
Vanderbilt has the 3rd-highest returning production in the country and the most in the entire SEC. Just because you return a lot of guys doesn’t mean you absolutely will improve but, as fans of a team that just won 21 games in two years with the highest returning production in the conference, Mizzou fans are intimately familiar with the fact that it can definitely happen.
The ‘Dores have a schedule with several potential pratfalls – at Virginia Tech, at South Carolina, LSU at home – plus the usual difficult games of Alabama, Texas, and Tennessee. But they are absolutely going to bite one or two “better” programs right in the dick, and I see Missouri and Auburn as the prime candidates to fall into that Nashvillian trap.
Missouri will get to face Diego Pavia for the last time (hopefully!) on the road after going Bye Week, Alabama at home, and then the first road trip of the year at Auburn. There’s a chance that the good guy Tigers are teetering after a two-game losing streak and that’s the last place you want to be when Jerry Kill and Diego Pavia get their sights set on you. Plus, no matter how good they actually are, there’s always a stigma to losing to Vanderbilt, like a built-in “-50 morale” roll that can potential gut the confidence of a college team.
There’s a lot of bad that can come of this game and it’s imperative that Drinkwitz and his staff spend every ounce of black magic sorcery they have to avoid a loss here. I’d hate to see what happens to the team if that outcome translates to reality.