Diego Pavia Knows What He's Accomplished. Yet, He's Still Scratching and Clawing For More This Fall Camp

Nashville–When the reps are seemingly endless and the heat starts to kick in on the turf field at Vanderbilt’s McGugin Center, Diego Pavia knows that he can make it through whatever’s coming.

If Pavia couldn’t, it wouldn’t be true to his character. You’d know something was off with the Vanderbilt quarterback if that was the case. Pavia’s outwardly confident personality isn’t tame elsewhere, but it’s at home when he’s out on that practice field going through his work each August morning.

This is Pavia’s time to be fully immersed in what he loves and he’s not taking it for granted. All is right in the world when he’s out there slinging it.

“I feel like this is my safe space, my safehaven,” Pavia said on Thursday. “I love this, this is grind time. You get to hang out with the guys, talk a little s***, have fun, learn about people’s families and just where they came from, their background.”

Each night after practice, Vanderbilt goes through what Pavia calls “team time” where Vanderbilt’s players have open conversation and work to get to know each other better than they did previously. Wednesday night included transfer running back Mahkylin Young leading what Pavia called a “really good time.”

It was all business as Pavia and his Vanderbilt teammates stepped out there on Thursday morning, though. It’s all football. No screwing around, no stopping until you’re told you can do so.

That’s okay with Pavia, though. So is the heat. The veteran quarterback has been through this a time or two. Once on Vanderbilt’s campus and a few times back home in New Mexico. Perhaps it’s too hot for some to enjoy the grind that they’re going through each day. Pavia cant help but enjoy it, though.

He’s seen much worse.

“I love it,” Pavia said of the fall camp grind. “It reminds me kind of like the wrestling grind. Nothing’s as hard as wrestling.”

Perhaps Pavia’s comfortability in a setting like he’s currently in could breed complacency, but that wouldn’t be true to his character either. If the pressure he put on himself and his teammates with public declarations in regards to his goals didn’t do it, the position he was in a year ago certainly did.

A year ago when Pavia got to the turf practice field at the McGugin Center, he was fighting through a quarterback competition that didn’t guarantee him or Utah transfer Nate Johnson anything once the regular season began. He had to work for everything.

As Pavia goes through his work this summer, he won’t often have to fight for first team reps. He’s already got the respect of Vanderbilt’s locker room. But he believes that if he lets his guard down, it could all go away.

“I feel like I’m still in a competition,” Pavia said. “Blaze, you guys see it, he’s lighting it up. In any given chance, the same thing that happened at New Mexico State, if I don’t play good then Blaze is up. That’s why I got to bring my A game every single day.”

In reality, no matter what Berlowitz does in the fall he’ll likely still be Pavia’s backup. If Pavia said that then it may change how the intensity of a practice fluctuates, though.

The Vanderbilt quarterback has a bolstered rèsumè, more money in his pocket and has buzzed his head–which reminds him that he won a national championship the last time he did it–but he’s not acting as if he’s owed anything around these parts. It’s still the same Pavia that showed up in the 2024 summer and played his highlights on the screen in Vanderbilt’s team room.

That version of him won’t go away. He’ll know it’s time to throw in the towel when that part of him leaves, his teammates will too. Until then, he’ll continue to be the last one on the practice field and fight to stay on the field as the Vanderbilt staff tries to help him preserve his body ahead of a grueling season.

“He’s allowed his standards to become our standards,” Vanderbilt coach Clark Lea said. “His influence now reaches from corner to corner of the locker room. The guys know who he is and what he’s about and so there’s a more solid identity in that locker room.”

Pavia isn’t sugarcoating his standards, he never has. At any chance, he’s telling anyone who wants to listen about his aspirations to take this Vanderbilt program where it’s never gone before. He’s willing to put his neck out and say that he’s confident that it can get to places that appear unrealistic to those who don’t know him.

Vanderbilt’s breakthrough in 2024 wasn’t good enough for him. Time for more.

“I don’t know if we have expectations,” Pavia said. “7-6 is pretty low expectations, I think. So let’s bring it every day.”

For this program, those expectations aren’t often low. A year like Vanderbilt had last season is one that gets teams reunions on the field at halftimes of games. It’s ones that make stars out of previously unheralded players.

That’s not the way of thinking with this group, though. It’s not good enough. To do more is to climb up a figurative mountain in the league that this group plays in. But if anyone can lead it up it, Pavia’s teammates believe it’s him.

“He’s a dog,” Vanderbilt three-way player Martel Hight said. “He’s like a magician. He knows what’s gonna happen. You know he’ll set you up good and make plays. Having that at the quarterback position is great.”