Go Time: Vanderbilt Football Approaches Final College Football Playoff Stretch
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NASHVILLE—-Back against the wall. No margin for error. All in. All the cliches apply to Vanderbilt football these days as it chases its first College Football Playoff berth in program history.
If this Vanderbilt team is going to do what no other team in school history has done, it doesn’t have to repeat the cliches throughout its locker room or put the pressure of not being able to lose another game on itself. It has to play with the intensity of a desperate team, though.
Perhaps desperate isn’t the right word for this group to take to heart, either. Desperate indicates that it has to play above its weight to do what it’s setting out to do, this team doesn’t have to do that. It just has to take whatever posture works best for it as it looks to win out the rest of the way.
“We had our mission set out a long time ago and we’re right where we want to be,” Vanderbilt safety Marlen Sewell said. “I think we’ll just be more urgent and more focused on the details in the meeting room, which can travel to the field.”
It can’t just travel to the field once or twice the rest of the way for this Vanderbilt team. If it’s going to play for a national championship, it’s got to go 3-0 the rest of the way. That would include it beating Tennessee, Kentucky and Auburn.
Rather than buying into what those outside of McGugin center believe about its ability to win out, Vanderbilt is all in on what its head coach has preached all season. A sure-fire way for Lea to flip out is him finding out that anyone on his team had bought into something that originated outside of Vanderbilt’s building.
“It's really just focusing on what we know we have at hand,” Vanderbilt tight end Eli Stowers said. “We know that we still have everything out in front of us and I think we're trying to treat every day like that.”
The challenge these days is Vanderbilt avoiding holding this thing too tightly down the stretch of the season and losing as a result. Vanderbilt has found a way to avoid that throughout its most successful stretches of the 2025 season, but perhaps its worst outing–a loss to Alabama in which it turned it over twice on the road–was due to its most important players looking to force things.
The good news for this team; it generally hasn’t flinched when it’s faced with a difficult mental task. It’s worked to insulate itself from complacency and hasn’t appeared to feel as if there’s been a margin for error the whole way. Vanderbilt quarterback Diego Pavia said that this Commodore team had to “win out” after its loss at Alabama and said the same after its loss to Texas on Saturday.
Vanderbilt has always had its eyes set on the College Football Playoff and still believes that it’s capable of achieving everything that it set out for early in the season. At the very least, they know they’re playing meaningful football in November.
“I told them today, 301 days ago from today, we pulled our bow back and fired an arrow with the intent of being exactly where we are, and here we are, and we're aimed right at the bull's eye, now we need to take that arrow and carry it the rest of the way,” Lea said. “We have been so intentional from January 7th on that there's no reason not to be intentional now. So let's lift above the emotions of the moment. Let's lift above the frustrations of a bad result. Let's lift above external narratives, or whatever opinions are out there, and say ‘okay, what is it that we're going to do? What is our level of suffering will tolerate? What is the level of sacrifice we'll make to continue this, going on where we want to go?’”
These days are the ones in which this Vanderbilt team–and its individual players–will define what their legacy will be when this is all said and done. Will they do what it takes to take this program on a ride to a place it’s never been? Or will they falter under the pressure and adversity that surrounds them?
Time to see what lies next for this group.
“We're in a position that our school hasn't been in in a while,” Stowers said. “I think that we understand that, and it's not necessarily putting pressure on us, but we know that we have a responsibility to take care of every single week, every single day, and we're trying to attack every single day like that.”
_(1)-b3e453dfe426b2dd4b83a12540ebdb37.jpeg "Joey Dwyer")
Joey Dwyer is the lead writer on Vanderbilt Commodores On SI. He found his first love in college sports at nearby Lipscomb University and decided to make a career of telling its best stories. He got his start doing a Notre Dame basketball podcast from his basement as a 14-year-old during COVID and has since aimed to make that 14-year-old proud. Dwyer has covered Vanderbilt sports for three years and previously worked for 247 Sports and Rivals. He contributes to Seth Davis' Hoops HQ, Southeastern 16 and Mainstreet Nashville.
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