Vanderbilt Cautioning Against Looking Ahead As Utah State and Alabama Loom

NASHVILLE—Vanderbilt cornerback Jordan Matthews stood there and said something that everyone surrounding Vanderbilt’s program likely was taken aback by, but he appeared to mean it as much as anything he said throughout his Tuesday session with the media.

Only Matthews knows the truthfulness of his claim and whether it was a calculated statement to indicate the mindset of his team or just a natural indicator of it, but it meant something in either case. In reality, most of Vanderbilt’s players know that No. 17 Alabama is next on their schedule after this weekend. They’re not giving attention to anyone but Utah State, though. They’re taking everything one step at a time.

“It’s a really big emphasis,” Matthews said of not looking ahead. “Coach Lea really forces us to go 1-0 each week and focus on each week’s task.”

This week’s task for this Vanderbilt team isn’t its tallest or its most glamorous, but it taking down Utah State as 22.5-point favorites will allow it to keep its momentum and move to 5-0 on the season.

In the past, Lea’s teams have looked past teams of Utah State’s caliber or worse in favor of a seemingly more meaningful game off in the distance. Perhaps this iteration of Lea’s team has already indicated that it’s more mature than those teams with a 45-3 win over Charleston Southern and a 70-21 win over Georgia State, though.

“The truth is we’ve never been a group that looks out ahead at any point in the year,” Vanderbilt coach Clark Lea said. “So, I haven’t really talked to anybody about it because I don’t need to. These guys are focused and they have a ton of respect each week for each opponent. What that means to us when we respect the opponent is we got to put all of our effort into the preparation so that we can play at our best.”

At this stage of Vanderbilt’s preparation, nobody within its program has uttered the word Alabama in a team setting. Lea certainly hasn’t. It’s all about Utah State and finding a way to limit its explosive plays, which Lea said are generally caused by “confusion” on Tuesday.

This Vanderbilt program isn’t good enough to overlook a Mountain West opponent and come out with a win. It learned that two seasons ago in a loss to UNLV. This iteration of Lea’s team is significantly better than that one–which isn’t all that difficult to see as a result of its first 4-0 start since 2008—but it still believes it has to put everything it has into this effort in order to win.

“Our coach says one climb at a time,” Vanderbilt running back MK Young said. “I think we can look forward to going 1-0 each week and I think we’re focused on Utah State. We're not looking ahead, but we’re just one climb at a time.”

The idea that Vanderbilt is clinging to throughout the week doesn’t appear to be all that unique, but Lea insists that it’s something genuine within his building. Lea says he doesn’t address Vanderbilt’s players regarding not looking ahead, but he appears to be insistent on enforcing it.

This Vanderbilt team has appeared to make a point of being more businesslike and execution-based in its preparation than even the 2024 iteration of itself. A press conference these days doesn’t include all that many jabs or outlandish statements. Instead of a team looking for recognition, this one appears to have the philosophy that it’s the hunted and shouldn’t add much fuel to the fire.

So, as this group enters its week five matchup with bigger ones on the horizon, there’s no Alabama talk, there’s no looking ahead and there’s no diminishing what they’ll have to do on Saturday.

“That’s what we owe this week, Utah State,” Lea said. “There’s no attempt here at anything. It’s just we are the program we are and we’re being the program that we are. That’s not something we tap into in the season, that’s something that we commit to the entirety of the year."