Why Clark Lea Believes Vanderbilt's Health is Sign of Progress Despite Shorthanded Scrimmage

Nashville–Anyone in the building at Vanderbilt’s Saturday night scrimmage at FirstBank Stadium couldn’t help but look over at the group sitting and stretching prior under the shade of its newly-renovated south end zone prior to its second scrimmage of the fall.

Not all of Vanderbilt’s players that didn’t participate in its scrimmage were over there, either.

Vanderbilt had just two offensive starters available for live periods on Saturday while Diego Pavia, Eli Stowers, Cole Spence, Sedrick Alexander and four of its first-team offensive linemen were off to the side. Vanderbilt also went through its scrimmage without Miles Capers, Glenn Seabrooks, Khordae Sydnor, Randon Fontenette, Martel Hight and Yilanan Ouattara.

Vanderbilt head coach Clark Lea says not to worry, though.

“It’s going to be a long season and part of our aim is to play better as we get into the middle, end of the year,” Lea said. “We’re trying to be fresh right now and also be fresh for our opener.”

Vanderbilt opens the season against Charleston Southern in 14 days and Lea says it doesn’t anticipate any health issues that are overly serious. Lea says that Stowers and Seabrooks’ returns may net out into game week, though.

Perhaps to an observer, it could appear as if Lea’s program is pushing his players too hard and not dialing back intensity enough throughout the summer. After all, the number of focal points in what Vanderbilt is trying to do grows seemingly each day due to nagging injuries.

What Lea sees is different, though. In a roundabout way, he believes that the uptick in minor injuries around his program represents its progress relative to where it was at the beginning of his tenure.

“I actually think we’ve already kind of done an alteration of our summer work,” Lea said. “I think there are things we can do to avoid the soft-tissue stuff, to kind of come out of summer training at the end. I honestly think we’ve had less of that in training camp than we’ve had in the past. A lot of the injuries have more to do with collisions. We’re bigger, faster, stronger, we’re generating more force at the point of attack.”

Lea knows that the accumulation of players on the sideline wouldn’t bode well for his team if it’s that way on Aug. 30, but he doesn’t believe that things will get to that point. If the season were to start today, a good chunk of Vanderbilt’s players that missed Saturday’s scrimmage would be available to take part in game action.

As a result, Vanderbilt will keep doing what it’s done since the beginning of camp.

“We have a physical style of play on both sides of the ball and I think that’s taken a toll,” Lea said. “That’s where we want to be smart. Some of the stuff we were doing [on Saturday] as a pass shell rather than having offensive and defensive linemen out there. Part of that is because we wanted to keep the defensive line fresh, but another part of it is that it’s just unnecessary collisions.”

At this stage, that’s the balancing act for Lea. He’s got to preserve what he’s got, but he also knows that this program in its current form can’t afford to take unnecessary reps or days off. Lea was upset earlier in Vanderbilt’s camp that because of its inefficiency in and out of drills it had to cut its practice by eight reps.

The fifth-year Vanderbilt coach is also cognizant of the idea that his teams’ season isn’t ongoing and that what it does on the practice field isn’t as important as his group being healthy down the stretch, particularly in November when he says it needs to win more than it has throughout the first four years of his tenure.

“You do the best you can to get as many reps as you can,” Lea said. “It’s a balance and certainly this isn’t a program that’s going to be finding the short end of that balance.”