3 reasons why Vanderbilt will go under its win total in 2026 – Saturday Down South

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By Spenser Davis
Published: May 29, 2026 · 8:00 AM EDT
When college football fans reflect on Vanderbilt’s 2025 season, there’s little doubt about who they will remember the most. 
Diego Pavia managed to do something special over his 2 seasons in Nashville, particularly in 2025 while leading the Commodores to their first 10-win season ever. 
Pavia’s moxie, confidence and brute efficiency were unforgettable. The win over Alabama in 2024 was special, but he and the entire Vandy program unlocked a new level of consistency in 2025 that paved the way for a historic season. 
Now looking ahead to 2026, I wonder what Vanderbilt’s identity will be. 
There’s an idea in basketball and football that teams take on the personality of their best players. That certainly was the case for Vandy last year. 
Vandy was confident, it was daring, it was unrelenting. That’s largely a credit to Pavia’s influence and abilities. 
What happens when a presence like Pavia is removed from a program? 
Well, we’re about to find out. Vanderbilt does have a talented replacement lined up in 5-star freshman Jared Curtis, who is slated to become the first true freshman SEC starting quarterback in Week 1 since Ken Seals started for Vandy in 2020. 
Although Curtis brings plenty of talent and pedigree to the table, I have some concerns about him filling Pavia’s shoes. Pavia finished 2nd in the Heisman Trophy race this past fall after turning in a passer efficiency rating of 170.4, which led the SEC. 
Either Curtis will turn in the best freshman quarterback season in recent memory or he will fall well, well short of that bar. 
Since the start of this decade, there’s only been one example of a good true freshman quarterback in the SEC: Florida’s DJ Lagway, who went 3-1 in SEC play and turned in a 168 passer efficiency rating across 7 total starts. 
The rest of the list, which includes names such as Seals, Robby Ashford, AJ Swann and John Rhys Plumlee, is rather bleak — at least for their freshman seasons. Plenty of quarterbacks were inefficient as true freshmen but went on to have solid SEC careers, such as Will Rogers and Bo Nix. 
Still, there appears to be a thin window for Curtis to be an above-average passer in 2026. That’s to say nothing of the intangibles that Pavia brought to the table which could be even tougher for Curtis to match. 
Clark Lea has his work cut out for him if Vandy is going to maintain anything close to the level it reached in 2025. 
This piece is part of a series we’re running this offseason at Saturday Down South where we’ll look at regular-season win totals for all 16 SEC teams. We’ve previously analyzed Alabama, Georgia and LSU, Auburn, Kentucky, Ole Miss and Oklahoma. Now we’re looking at Vanderbilt. 
Here’s what Vandy’s win total currently looks like on BetMGM: 
This may seem like a sharp drop-off, but Vegas is expecting the Commodores to contend for bowl eligibility this season. That’s no small feat. Vandy has won 6+ games just 8 times in the last 40 years. 
At -155, the implied probability of Vandy getting to 6+ wins is 60.78%.
Here’s a look at Vandy’s 2026 slate:
Vandy opens the season with an FCS opponent in Austin Peay and a newly-promoted program in Delaware. The Commodores should be 2-0 entering Week 3 when they host NC State. 
Then the 9-game SEC schedule begins with road games at Auburn and Georgia. The Commodores also face Ole Miss in October and close out the season with tough games against Alabama, Florida and Tennessee. 
The middle of the schedule offers a reprieve of sorts. Vandy will host Arkansas and then have road games against Kentucky and Mississippi State. Trips to Lexington and Starkville won’t necessarily be easy, but those are winnable contests. 
My pick: Vanderbilt goes under its win total of 5.5. Here are 3 reasons why:
I’ve already written about the potential pitfalls of replacing Pavia in this story, so I won’t belabor that point. However, Vanderbilt’s returning production issues don’t stop with him. 
According to ESPN’s Bill Connelly, Vanderbilt ranks 106th nationally in returning production. More granularly, the Commodores are 115th on offense and 80th on defense. 
Having bad returning production metrics isn’t necessarily a death sentence, especially in the transfer portal era where there’s more volatility in how players will perform when their team context changes. 
But it’s worth noting that Vandy’s returning production going into 2025 was elite and that proved to be impactful for the Commodores, especially on offense. Its low ranking on both sides of the ball entering 2026 is a worrying sign.
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Clark Lea is a defensive-minded head coach and his DC, Steve Gregory, is entering his second season in that role. 
However, defense was quietly a huge issue for the Commodores in 2025 despite their 10-2 regular season record. Per Game on Paper, Vandy was 117th nationally in EPA-per-play allowed. 
By total EPA, Vanderbilt ranked 134th out of 136 FBS teams in pass defense. It was 100th in pass defense efficiency rating. 
Vanderbilt only signed a one transfer defensive back who is likely to be a significant addition this season in former Clemson safety Ricardo Jones. Although he picked off 6 passes last season, Jones earned just a 68.1 coverage grade from PFF in 2025. 
Vanderbilt could have an improved secondary this season, but it’s tough to imagine a jump into the top half of the SEC given where the Commodores were in this area a year ago. If the offense takes a step back as expected with Pavia leaving, that ground will have to be made up somewhere. I’m skeptical that Vanderbilt has the defense to compensate for that loss. 
In trying to find 6 wins for this Vandy team, there are 5 games that jump off the page: Austin Peay, Delaware, Arkansas, Kentucky and Mississippi State. I think it’s likely that Vandy needs to win all 5 of those games if it wants to have a chance at bowl eligibility. 
My concern is that both the Kentucky and Mississippi State games are on the road. Florida and Auburn, which are probably Vandy’s next most-winnable SEC games, also come on the road. 
Even if Vanderbilt manages to go 5-0 against those aforementioned opponents, it would likely need to pick up a win against either NC State or Tennessee. That’s certainly possible, but given that the juice is +120 to the under, I think the value is on the Dores just missing out on bowl eligibility. 
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Spenser is a news editor for Saturday Down South and covers college football across all Saturday Football brands.
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