Vanderbilt Football Has Tangibly Different Feeling In 2025 Fall Camp, But It Still Has To Prove It Deserves It

Nashville–As if he was fighting for respect without physically doing so, Vanderbilt quarterback Diego Pavia got behind the podium and monitor in Vanderbilt’s team room on the second floor of the McGugin Center, pulled up YouTube and clicked on a video of his highlights.

Every indication from those in the room that day is that Pavia’s bold move–which appeared to be among the first of many–was received well among his teammates, but none of them would’ve been out of line to question the attitude of the New Mexico State transfer.

At that point Pavia was in the midst of an open quarterback competition and hadn’t yet played a power-five season. Yet, he came in proclaiming that he was going to be the one to get it done at Vanderbilt–where nobody has in most of its recent history. The Vanderbilt quarterback followed it up with just a ‘so/so’ fall camp performance that left those who had seen Vanderbilt’s program fall flat on its face for years believe that it was going to again.

If those who were jaded from Vanderbilt’s previous scars weren’t skeptics of Pavia or the program that he was planning to lead already, they’d likely take on that title on August 17. Vanderbilt took the field that day for its second fall scrimmage and left parts of its jaded crowd saying that they’d seen enough to leave before everything was all said and done.

The sugarcoaters among the group that had assembled in FirstBank Stadium’s press box were searching for anything positive to draw. The ones with a sense of sarcasm wondered out loud if this is what football looked like before the forward pass was invented in 1906.

It looked like it was going to be little old Vanderbilt being little old Vanderbilt again.

“Last year at fall camp you really just didn’t know,” Vanderbilt linebacker Langston Patterson said after Vanderbilt’s first fall camp practice of 2025. “You saw bits and flashes of what we were gonna be, but we didn’t fully put it together until the season.”

Once Vanderbilt put it all together, it was a story like few others in its program’s recent memory. It secured its first win over the No. 1 ranked team in the country. It won at Auburn for the first time in program history. It played in–and won–a bowl game for the first time since 2018.

Standing on the sideline at a Vanderbilt practice nowadays and watching the way its players conduct themselves would indicate that they know what they’ve accomplished. Some would perceive it as delusional, but what this Vanderbilt team talks about leads them to walk around that way.

It’s not as if Clark Lea’s team is cocky or complacent as a result of what they’ve done, though. Perhaps the best temperature check of Vanderbilt football in its current state acknowledges the confidence that it conveys as a result of the proof of concept it has, but isn’t dismissing that it wants more than it accomplished in its 7-6 season.

“Our goal is a national championship,” Pavia said on the second day of camp. “I think people want to see us win more. What I can do is just distribute the ball better. Timing routes I worked on a lot. My feet I worked on a lot. My job is to fill the seats, and the way we feel the seats is with winning.”

Pavia’s seat-filling theory has yet to be tested, but if the feeling around the program that he’s the face of is any indication then he’ll get some return on his investment in becoming Vanderbilt football’s lead marketer.

Walk towards Vanderbilt’s McGugin Center for a light Friday-morning practice and you’ll see Lea on the jumbotron with a Netflix logo beside him as the school markets the Commodores’ appearance on “Any Given Saturday,” which documents the SEC’s 2024 season.

As Vanderbilt’s press conferences are set to begin that same day, another glance right indicates the magnitude of the program’s growth. Around the 20 yard line on Vanderbilt’s turf practice field–where it just wrapped up a live period that heavily featured its starters–stands comedian Theo Von on-brand in his camo pants alongside Vanderbilt tight end Eli Stowers.

People of Von’s stature didn’t used to care about this program. It used to be the punching bag on their shows and appearances if football ever came up. Now they’re gravitating towards it before the lights come on.

“You see a mentality that’s stronger than last year, you see people who are stronger,” Patterson said. “It’s just a whole team that’s gotten one percent better each day.”

Perhaps Vanderbilt’s greatest area of improvement relates to its perception and the respect it’s generated as a result of what it’s done. It feels as if it has practically improved, though.

There’s no quarterback competition this season--despite what Pavia says about Vanderbilt backup Blaze Berlowitz–Vanderbilt’s cornerback, linebacker and defensive line depth appears to be improved, fifth-year Vanderbilt safety Marlen Sewell says it's the best safety room and team that he’s played on to this point.

Veterans like Sewell–who has been with Lea since the start of his Vanderbilt tenure and paid his dues through all of the program’s growing pains–can confidently say that as a result of the step forward that his program has undergone, but also its retention of most of its core group.

Vanderbilt returned 14 starters from its 2024 roster as well as 78% of its offensive production and 77% of its defensive production. As Vanderbilt opened camp, it already had its defensive install in and wasn’t all that unfamiliar with offensive coordinator Tim Beck’s system–like it was last offseason as Vanderbilt running back Sedrick Alexander said the Commodores went through their fair share of growing pains.

Now it’s rolling.

“Those guys that return, they know how we operate,” Lea said. “It gives you the chance to be efficient, to have expectations, honestly to have peer-to-peer accountability.”

Vanderbilt–and particularly its returners–appear to be at a crossroads at this stage. If their experience is used as a building block to greater performance and more advanced work, it could allow them to take a step that this program has rarely ever taken. If they use experience to justify complacency, then they’ll likely get punched in the face with reality a few more times than they’d like.

Whenever the intensity slips–like it did on Vanderbilt’s first day of camp in which it lost eight reps due to procedural issues throughout the day–then Lea will sit there and hang the national championship expectations over their collective heads. Like ‘you want to do this? And you’re acting like that?’

“I also think [experience] can be a bit of a crutch,” Lea said. “I also think it can be something that becomes a negative if you think that it entitles you to being better so we gotta be really careful to use the good of it. Like ‘we know what to do out here, we can hold each other accountable to our expectations.’”

Leave it to Lea to be Vanderbilt’s needed buzzkill in the room.

What appears to be the natural step for this program isn’t going to come naturally. The national championship talk comes with responsibility. Theo Von doesn’t show up for losers.

“We have to chase progress, we can’t just assume that we’re one year better,” Lea said. “We’ve got to go make some things happen.”