Clark Lea Trusts Jared Curtis, Vanderbilt Football Offense in First Road Game

NASHVILLE — When five-star freshman Jared Curtis officially committed to playing college football in the SEC, he agreed to, and likely wanted, go into tough environments around college football and try to come away with wins.

Through three weeks this season, Curtis has had it nice getting settled into college football with three home games. But this weekend, Curtis’ first road test of his college football career will arrive. Vanderbilt goes to Auburn to open up SEC play, the beginning of the Commodores’ nine-game conference gauntlet.

Young quarterbacks going on the road in the SEC and traveling back home with a win is a very difficult thing to do, regardless of the preseason hype and ratings of the young quarterback.

Vanderbilt head coach Clark Lea has done his best to not make this weekend too big for Curtis. In fact, Lea has not interjected much in giving advice to Curtis for these situations. That is ultimately because he trusts the job of Curtis’ offensive coaches and in Curtis himself.

“My support to him is more kind of general check-ins and he’s doing really well. He signed up for this. He signed up for these road challenges,” Lea said. “But I trust him. I trust him. I trust his instincts.”

Though Auburn has not been the most difficult place to win in the SEC over the past season, the noise at Jordan-Hare Stadium is still real and is nearly impossible to simulate, much like every other SEC crowd.

Lea, however, did note Thursday that Curtis and the Vanderbilt offense has been operating with noise simulation in practice this week.

Vanderbilt is going to use the crowd noise Saturday as an excuse to not execute offensively. At the end of the day, the job of Curtis and the rest of the offense is to execute and score. The offense has been a little slow to develop and get going through three weeks, though.

Of course, Vanderbilt had constant changing of quarterbacks between Curtis and Berlowitz for the first six quarters of the season before Curtis took over full time going back to the start of the second half against Delaware in Week 2.

Since Curtis has come in, Vanderbilt’s offense has developed and showed what it can become when it gets into a rhythm. But Vanderbilt’s offense still has a lot of room to grow between Curtis’ development, chemistry on the offensive line and other guys in the passing game looking to step up.

What Vanderbilt is looking to avoid this week is having to play catch up throughout the whole game. A slow start both offensively and defensively a week ago put Vanderbilt in a 14-0 hole early and a 24-7 hole in the third quarter against NC State.

The offense showed up in the nick of time to set up a miraculous finish, but Lea knows that will not fly with the SEC schedule.

“I trust that he’s [Curtis] building that chemistry with the offense. Obviously, I expect them to continue to improve in performance as the year goes on,” Lea said. “My hope is that we’re playing ahead of the game and able to establish some identity and not put our offense in positions where we’re chasing down leads.”

Curtis helped Vanderbilt chase down a lead last week despite having freshman moments. Auburn is going to try to make Curtis look like a freshman Saturday. If Vanderbilt does fall behind, Lea feels like he can lean on Curtis to bring Vanderbilt back again.

“It will be a test and a challenge. I know that it won’t be perfect, but we have his back and we trust him in a situation where we’re chasing the game down. We know that he has the ability to get us back in it. He’s shown that,” Lea said.

Vanderbilt will look to take another step offensively and get off to a stronger start against Auburn at 3:15 p.m. CT.

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