Clark Lea Talks About Aftermath to Vanderbilt Football’s Win Over NC State

NASHVILLE — A few days ago, the team meeting started off normally for a victory Sunday for Vanderbilt football.

Sundays after wins always feel better in every aspect than the day following a loss, as head coach Clark Lea would attest to. In Sunday meetings, Lea does not focus too much on the result of a win or loss, but rather takes time to celebrate the players who made the key plays in the game.

In the team’s most recent Sunday meeting, Lea took time to first challenge his players to get better in syncing up and building chemistry on the field before recognizing wide receiver Junior Sherrill for his clutch play on a fourth down and safety Ricardo Jones for his defensive stop on a NC State fourth down attempt.

And then came the time to take a look back at the final play. The play that will be remembered in Vanderbilt athletics forever. Everybody knows what went down in the final six seconds in Vanderbilt’s 35-31 win over NC State. Miles Capers punched the ball out of CJ Bailey’s arm and Cayden Daniels fell on it for the win.

In the team meeting, Lea was not so much focused on the schematics that created the miracle. He wanted to turn his players’ focus to the reaction right after.

“When I showed the finish to the game, the end zone shot in our coaches film pans out. And you see the chaos emerging from our sideline and then the stadium erupting, too,” Lea said. “There were some beautiful shots of two people running on opposite sides of the section of the end zone. They ran on the second level – thank God they’re okay – into a big embrace.”

Lea’s point in showing his team the crowd reaction to the final play was simple: it was to show the impact his players have on the community around them as well as to show the beauty of sports.

Fanbases can take college sports or any sport their favorite teams play a little too seriously at times. But what that does show is that fanbases have true passion and a true love for their team that cannot be explained to those that are not invested in the world of sports.

The flip side of fanbases perhaps being too invested in a team is what happens when things go right. When things go right, especially in a miracle scenario that Vanderbilt triumphed on Saturday, reactions are born that will leave lasting memories.

That is exactly what Lea extrapolated from the crowd reaction as he showed it to his team. The impact his team has on the Nashville community is bigger than what Vanderbilt imagined.

“The message was ‘How cool is it that we get to do something we love with people we love?’ That can ripple out into a community that shows up in support of us and inspires them in this way. Like, that’s a really neat thing. We can't lose sight of that,” Lea said.

Lea showed his team another thing. He pulled up ESPN’s win probability chart of Vanderbilt’s game against NC State. When five-star freshman quarterback Jared Curtis threw an interception with 1:04 left in the game, NC State had a 99.9% chance to win the game. When there were six seconds remaining in the game, NC State had a win probability of 99.9%.

If win probability charts went to the hundredths place of decimals, it seems reasonable to assume NC State’s win probability would have been a touch higher than 99.9%, perhaps close to 99.99%.

But Vanderbilt did not care about the 0.1% win probability the analytics gave it. Instead, it ran a field block play that produced a miraculous win.

“What I said to the team was ‘I’m glad the 0.1% was in the room’ because it’s a testament to the power of the internal, which is so important to us in this program. And the only reason we’re where we are is because we’ve tended to the internal. We haven’t listened to the external,” Lea said.

Lea has instilled a culture in his team that does not give one care in the world about what people in the media or online think about Vanderbilt. He acknowledges his team was fortunate to win on Saturday for what people have described as a “culture win.”

But Vanderbilt believes it can use what happened Saturday as a springboard to what it can prove the next couple of months of the regular season. If his players believe, Lea thinks anything is possible.

“Let us never forget that we may be doubted everywhere, but if we are together and fighting and in belief in what’s possible, that we can make it happen,” Lea said.

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