Bryan Longwell is Wearing the Number of His Childhood Favorite Player and Hopes To Use His IQ To Live Up To It

Nashville–Growing up, Bryan Longwell and his brother disagreed on one thing. Longwell’s favorite football player was Julio Jones and his brother’s was Larry Fitzgerald.

The two receivers had some differences in their styles of play, but they–as well as Longwell’s brother had something in common; they both wore No. 11. As a result, Longwell and his brother each followed in their favorite player’s footsteps as high schoolers and wore those numbers. Now Longwell sports a similar look as a college player.

The Lipscomb Academy product will wear No. 11 in his third college season, which he hopes will be his best yet.

Longwell was already an effective player as a sophomore who led the team with 89 tackles, recorded one and a half sacks as well as one interception, but he’s still bugging Vanderbilt linebackers coach Nick Lezynski–who returns four impact linebackers in his room–to watch tape and see if the pair can find adjustments to make based off of it.

“Nobody wants to learn more football than Bryan,” Lezynski said after Vanderbilt’s fall camp practice on Monday. “He’s always watching tape tape and you see it pay off on the field because the dude has an anticipation and an awareness that’s natural.”

The 6-foot-1, 227 pound linebacker has always had to rely on what he knows as a result of what people perceive to be his undersized nature. The Lipscomb Academy product was a lightly-recruited three-star prospect as a high schooler, but has shown that his traits can translate to the SEC if he’s given the right opportunity.

As a result, he’s projected to start as a junior at Vanderbilt. His physical traits may not stand out while he does so, but he’s still likely to make an impact on each game he plays in.

“My mom says I’ve always been really smart with it,” Longwell said. “I’d attribute it a lot to my high school coach. I think from the time I was a sophomore when I was a sophomore and transferred to Lipscomb Academy I always had a lot of defense taught to me over and over again. I’ve also just been naturally good at pattern recognition and I see stuff.”

Longwell knows what’s on his rèsumè at this stage of his career, but he believes there’s still room for him to go in terms of becoming a more impactful player. Perhaps that doesn’t show in his pure tackle numbers, but it does in another area of his game that he deems important.

Everyone knows what the Vanderbilt linebacker can do when coming downhill and racking up tackles, but he wants another part of his game to show vividly in 2025.

“The next step in my development I would say is a lot of contesting at the catch point,” Longwell said. “I think I’m good at cutting off routes, but I think a lot is just me contesting at the catch point and causing a bit more havoc.”

Watching Longwell practice each day generally leaves an impression. Some of that impression comes as a result of his open-field tackling ability, some comes purely as a result of how involved he always appears to be.

The Vanderbilt linebacker also wants a trained eye to be able to see that he’s verbalizing more of what he’s seeing and can spread that to the rest of Vanderbilt’s defense. Perhaps that can lead to the untrained eye seeing what his position coach has seen in regards to him playing around the ball.

“He has such a great instinct for the football,” Lezynski said. “You don’t have to coach everything with Bryan and that’s because he has such a good feel.”