What is the State of the Union of the Vanderbilt Football Offensive Line?

The Vanderbilt offensive line has made it through a little over a week of fall camp. Here is where things stand with the guys up front.

Vanderbilt offensive line coach Chris Klenakis goes through drills at Vanderbilt University’s McGugin Center practice fields Tuesday, April 7, 2026. | USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect

NASHVILLE – The offensive line of Vanderbilt football is one of, if not, the most important part of the Commodores roster each year. Over the past few seasons, the performance of the teams seems to go as the offensive line goes.

The success of last season was in direct correlation with the offensive line performance. In fact, Vanderbilt’s offensive line – known at “The Union” – was a candidate for the Joe Moore Award last season. Though it did not win the award, the Commodores did have one of the best offensive lines in college football in 2025.

Fast forward to this season and things are a little different. Cade McConnell is the only presumed starter on the offensive line from the starting front last season. Vanderbilt did bring in transfers such as Beau Johnson from North Dakota State and Lyndon Cooper from Pittsburgh as well as Micah DeBose from Alabama.

Vanderbilt is eight days into camp before Saturday’s first scrimmage of the month. So, what is the state of the union of “The Union”?

“I’ve been doing this 41 years and we’re on day eight. It’s time to push through and start to separate. I told the guys yesterday that it’s time for us to separate,” Vanderbilt offensive line coach Chris Klenakis said after Friday’s practice. “Everybody feels good on the first day of camp. Where are you on day eight, nine, 10 and 11? That’s where you start laying the foundation of your season.”

The new faces on the offensive line are going to play a critical role this season. Vandy On SI projected both Johnson and Cooper to be starters on the line. In camp, both have seemed to look good as the program seems like it will rely a lot on those two in addition to McConnell.

But just because they are new to the program does not take away from the experiences they bring to the program. Klenakis sees the experience Cooper gained during his time at Pittsburgh. With plenty of snaps in a power conference in the past, Klenakis knows Cooper brings a lot of value to the offensive line. Cooper seems to know what he’s doing at center and helping run the offense.

Maybe the biggest thing to note about Cooper is that Klenakis believes his technique has made great strides.

“He’s really improved his technique since he got here in January through the spring. He got better and better and better with technique and got better over the summer and he just continues to get better,” Klenakis said.

The most encouraging part about where the offensive line is now is the amount of discipline the guys have up front compared to a season ago. At this point during fall camp in 2025, Vanderbilt’s offensive line had some struggles with avoiding penalties. In 2026, that has not been a theme.

Perhaps that means Vanderbilt’s offensive line is a little ahead of schedule of where it wants to be and certainly ahead of schedule compared to where it was after the eighth practice a season ago.

There were some growing pains in the spring, but the operation of the position room as a whole is much improved to where it was four months ago. To add another layer, Vanderbilt is in the middle of a quarterback competition, meaning there are multiple different cadences for the offensive line to think about in practice. At first, it was tough. Now, it seems like the guys up front are used to it.

“In the spring we were wearing four different quarterbacks. We could pick four of us right now to read the same sentence out of a book and it’s not going to sound the same when we all read it. Same with the center hearing the quarterback, the snap count’s not going to sound the same. So, we’re getting used to them all. It’s really helped,” Klenakis said.

Last but not least, Vanderbilt is happy with the communication on the offensive line. With the new guys being just a couple months removed from the transfer portal when spring ball was happening, the communication and chemistry was a work in process.

Now, that seems to be more defined. Vanderbilt is starting to see the results from all the extra work it has been putting in since the roster came together.

“I’ve been really pleased with the communication. After spring ball we went back to the classroom with our OTAs and did a lot of extra work on the ID [of blitzes] because we had five new guys. We’ve been on it since June and we can see the fruits of our labor coming out,” Klenakis said.

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