Time For Vanderbilt Football to Show Its Growth, Take Care of Task At Hand

Nashville—Is it going to be the Vanderbilt team that showed up against Ball State and Georgia State? Or the Vanderbilt team that comes out, puts its head down and takes care of business?

That’s the question surrounding Vanderbilt as it opens the most pivotal season of Clark Lea’s tenure yet in front of a sold-out FirstBank Stadium. In a game that won’t determine how far it goes or how its campaign is ultimately viewed, a game that Vanderbilt is a 36.5-point favorite in, it’s tasked with doing its thing and beating Charleston Southern handily.

It’s not a matter of overcoming a talent gap in this case like it has been so many times for this program, it’s a matter of focus and intensity. If Lea’s team is firing on all cylinders mentally, he believes it can compete with anyone. If it isn’t, he believes he could “leave it up to chance.”

Time for this program to stop leaving it up to chance. Time for it to come in, go to work and leave no question as to whether it was ready to play or not. It’s week one, there’s no excuse for anything else.

“Every opponent we play, you got to respect them,” Vanderbilt defensive end Khordae Sydnor said. “It’s a new team from last year just like how Vandy is a new team from 2023 and 2024. You have to take each opponent and attack them like you’re playing a SEC game.”

No excuse for lapses in focus. No excuse for taking plays off. No excuse for a lethargic start. If Vanderbilt gets beat on a rep, whatever. If it gets beat by Charleston Southern’s new-look offense schematically, that’s not all that inexcusable. Now, if its effort wanes then its head coach is going to lose his mind.

If that’s the case then he likely should. He’s worked tirelessly for years to instill an attitude within his program that requires it to avoid overlooking or not adequate preparing for anybody. A dreary performance from his team on Saturday would undermine the things he’s said to his players so often as he takes the podium in its team room and articulates his vision for what their season could look like.

“We have standards, we have expectations,” Lea said. “We have strategy, we have style, we have identity, things that we have spoken into existence, actualized on our fields. Those things need to show up for us in what will be an imperfect game. For us, there’s going to be a lot that we learn about our team on Saturday that gives us an ability to say ‘okay, here’s what we know and here’s how we move forward.’”

Clark Lea looks to instill intensity and focus within his team ahead of Saturday's game. | Imagn

If all goes right for Lea’s group, he’ll do significantly more learning about its depth and young players rather than his starters. If he learns anything about his starters outside of their ability to come in and conduct a business-like beat down, it’s likely to be negative.

This Vanderbilt core has done that before and did it swiftly in a 56-0 win over Alcorn State last season, but that’s a thing of the past. This group has national championship aspirations that are greater than the ones the 2024 version of itself had.

Vanderbilt won’t solve world hunger or indicate that it can win the whole thing on Saturday, but it will have an opportunity to avoid the outcome that can derail the track that it appears to be on.

It will have an opportunity to prove that this isn’t the same old Vanderbilt that lets Gabe Giardina’s team become a snake in the grass as a result of its new-look offense. Why doesn’t this Vanderbilt team do what so many others haven’t been able to, though?

It appears as if it’s asking that same proverbial question as it goes throughout its prep.

“The details that it's going to take for us to play the way we want to play, those need to start showing up for us in preparation,” Lea said on Tuesday. “Take ownership in that level of preparation, that level of detail.  That'll be the emphasis here through the finish.”

Lea—who hasn’t often minced words about the level of preparation he’s seen—said that as of Tuesday, his group had “great” intensity and focus heading into the week. As far as the fifth-year head coach is concerned, Sunday was one of his group’s better practices of the fall.

He’s going to need to see something similar on Saturday if he’s going to head home happy.

“That’s what it’s going to take–focus and execution–for us to find the result we’re looking for on Saturday,” Lea said. “For them to take ownership in that level of preparation, that level of detail, that’ll be the emphasis here.”