Vanderbilt Won't Call Georgia State Win Revenge, But It Will Call it Progress

NASHVILLE—Vanderbilt football had a strong enough showing on Saturday to make everyone inside of FirstBank Stadium wonder how it lost to this program a year ago.

What happened on Saturday night in Vanderbilt’s 70-21 win over Georgia State was more reminiscent of bullying than a football game. It was vengeful. It was merciless. It was a product of what Vanderbilt STAR Randon Fontenette called “extra motivation” on Tuesday.

Vanderbilt still won’t call it a revenge game, though.

“It’s less about that, honestly,” Lea said. “We needed to be prepared.”

Georgia State’s defense is significantly worse than it was a year ago and its roster as a whole likely is, too. It wasn’t about that, though. Just like it was about Vanderbilt this time last year, it was about the Commodores again on Saturday night.

“This is a new team,” Vanderbilt quarterback Diego Pavia said. “You feel the energy.”

It was about Vanderbilt’s focus. It was about its intensity. It was about its fire for winning and the idea that it was never going to leave FirstBank Stadium on Saturday without a win, whether it required revenge or not.

Vanderbilt’s win over Dell McGee’s included all the staples of a blowout win over an inferior opponent. Pavia was out of the game with 10:10 to go in the third quarter. Vanderbilt blocked a punt for a touchdown. It scored a touchdown on each of its first six drives.

This Vanderbilt team was dominant in nearly every way a year after it lost itself and walked into the tunnel at the old Turner Field–a place that appeared to be the literal definition of rock bottom for it.

Vanderbilt failed to establish any sort of consistent run game that night. It failed to find any answer for standout Georgia State receiver Ted Hurst–who finished the day with 128 receiving yards and two touchdowns. It failed to put Georgia State away in the game’s final minutes. Perhaps worst of all, it failed to demonstrate that it had matured as a program.

“I was disappointed because we were a better team than that,” Vanderbilt three-way standout Martel Hight said on Tuesday. “We came out lackadaisical and we kind of just had in our mind that we were going to win that game already and that’s where we failed last year.”

This Vanderbilt team came out and took care of business on Saturday, though. It was ready to win against the program that likely gave it some bad memories whenever its name was brought up. It no longer has to cringe when it hears Georgia State, though.

This program has its get back and finally has proof that it’s better than McGee’s. It could say that all it wanted heading into Saturday, but it couldn’t easily prove that it was true. The head-to-head results would always come back up and hamper its argument.

Now, it can finally say with some certainty that it’s not delusional to think that what happened last year in Atlanta was a fluke.

“We did not forget that game from a year ago and how painful that was,” Lea said. “We were aware of how we played a year ago, we were aware that this team is dangerous and that we needed to be prepared so we then channelled our energy towards ‘hey, we need to play fast, we need to win the explosives.’ We started fast and we took command of the game.”

So long, sour taste. Vanderbilt football righted a wrong.

Finally.