Clark Lea, Vanderbilt Football Know Third-Downs Could Be Its Fatal Flaw and That It Needs to Be Addressed

Nashville–Too often Vanderbilt head coach Clark Lea and defensive coordinator Steve Gregory would find themselves standing around and thinking about the possibility that their defense would be off the field momentarily only to have to dial up a few more plays in an effort to finalize a stop.

Lea and Gregory are tired of that feeling as they head into a 2025 season that they believe could allow them to play into January.

“I think the most glaring [issue] is third down,” Lea said. “I take responsibility for that a year ago. First and second down are predictors obviously, so you gotta get a team off schedule, get them behind the sticks, you’re gonna play third and winnable more, especially in our league.”

The numbers behind Vanderbilt’s third-down struggles were as ugly as Lea’s comments on them–which came immediately as he was asked for a broad overview of the Vanderbilt defense–would indicate.

Vanderbilt was the third worst team at stopping third-down conversions in the country last season, was the worst in the SEC and was nearly 20% worse than the best SEC team in that department was in 2024. In whatever context it’s brought up, the 49.67% conversion rate wasn’t good enough.

Lea is using the idea that 77% of his defensive production from last season is returning as a positive indicator of his program’s evolution and ability to be competitive moving forward, but each member of he and Gregory’s defense has heard all about their shortcomings on the “money” downs last season.

“That has been the place where we’ve made most of our emphasis for improvement,” Lea said. “There was somewhat of a reluctance to man coverage at times, so I needed to trust a little more in our ability to cover. Sometimes there wasn’t enough shortening the down or pressure. So we’ve put a lot of time and attention into third-down performance.”

Watch a Vanderbilt practice on any weekday morning in the fall and you’re likely to hear Lea talk into his mic and enter his players into a third-down period in which they’re competing in situational live periods that give them a taste of what the pressure will feel like down the stretch.

Pressure often comes in different forms this time of year, though. It’s often related to position battles and demonstrating that summer work was worthwhile. It’s often related to individuals proving themselves.

Rarely is it situational as consistently as it’s been for Vanderbilt football this offseason.

“This is the earliest I’ve ever seen a third-down package,” Vanderbilt linebacker Bryan Longwell said. “We pretty much had it in on the third day and the whole time we’ve been practicing things and we’ve had periods dedicated to things that beat our third-down packages and things and ways to improve on that and how to combat it has been a huge emphasis.”

Running from reality and the idea that the season Vanderbilt had–as it went 7-6 and won the Birmingham Bowl–likely isn’t repeatable isn’t a productive one at this stage. It has to get real about where it’s realistically at and what it’s going to take for that to improve.

No politically correct verbiage to make everyone involved feel better about reality. No running from it in practice. No attributing this to bad luck. Vanderbilt–and everyone else–has identified an issue within its defense and it’s got to fix it.

Time for it to figure this out before it costs it.

“I’m not gonna sugarcoat it and act like we were good on third down last year," Longwell said as if he was an objective analyst rather than a player looking to build up his peers for a second.That was a major part of why a lot of drives extended and we got behind sometimes. We’ve been really focused on that.”