Vanderbilt Football Notebook: A “Rough” Offensive Day, Building Chemistry on the O-Line, Kevo Wesley’s Return – Sports Illustrated

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NASHVILLE – Vanderbilt football wrapped up its second practice of the third week of spring ball Thursday night, but it was a day that Vanderbilt offensive coordinator Tim Beck thought could have gone better.
Offensively, the Commodores had what Beck called a “rough” day of practice. Part of it Beck attributes to the new guys on the offense this season still trying to get acclimated to the system, but the other reason for his feelings came down to simple execution.
“The biggest thing is we’ve got some new faces trying to get used to some new things. We’re not executing where we want to be. Our focus wasn’t as good as it needed to be today,” Beck said.
Of course, every coach on every staff wants each practice to run smoothly throughout spring ball and into the rest of practice leading into the season. Some days things just are not clicking as much as coaches would want them to, but that’s part of the natural process of spring practice and the process of improving and fixing things before the season begins.
It was not and has not been all bad through practice though. As Beck said, he thought the offense went well during more “live” segments of the practice. And on top of that, it is more so about fine tuning techniques and players abilities.
“We’ve really kind of done a lot better when we’ve gone to some actual live periods. That’s helped us a little bit, but we’re still just in the process of learning and working on fundamentals and techniques and getting better,” Beck said.
Going forward until Vanderbilt closes its spring ball up with the Black and Gold Game on April 18, Beck is expecting his guys on offense to respond after today’s practice. There are not any new things the players have to do in order to have a better practice the next time they step onto the practice field.
It is simply about showing up and doing things the right way. Continue to stay process-oriented locked into the moment.
“The biggest thing is execution. We got to execute a lot better and at a much higher level. It’s not about adding things. It’s just we have to execute the calls that we have and do a better job of that,” Beck said.
With the amount of new faces on the offensive line this season, perhaps the first thing that is of the utmost importance in the spring and going into the summer and fall is finding chemistry between all the guys up front.
While there are experienced veterans like Cade McConnell, Kevo Wesley and Orion Irving that can help with that, it is more of a process to build chemistry between the transfers and the freshman on the offensive line.
“The chemistry is developing. It’s a process. It’s not done overnight. It takes a lot of work together, but we have definitely taken steps since January and we’re progressing the way we should be,” Vanderbilt offensive line coach Chris Klenakis said on how the chemistry of the offensive line has come along.
Chemistry is built through practice on the field, but it is more importantly built through bonding time outside of football. And that is exactly what this offensive line and this roster has done together. Offensive lineman Kevo Wesley was one of the players that was spotted at the Vanderbilt baseball game as the Commodores came away with a 16-inning win over Tennessee.
But the offensive linemen do more than just attend baseball games together as well.
“We go to baseball games and watch a lot of film together. Basketball games, we went to a lot of basketball games this year. And we spend a lot of time up here at the facility outside of instructed meeting time. Just hanging out in the o-line room,” Wesley said.
Speaking of Kevo Wesley, he is back on the field after missing the 2025-2026 season due to injury. As Klenakis made sure to note, the last time Vanderbilt fans saw Wesley on the field was when he was a starter in the Birmingham Bowl victory over Georgia Tech during the 2024-2025 season.
Now that he is back, Wesley is ready to use his experience to his ability and step back into the mix and help the team.
“I got to be grateful for every opportunity to get to come out here and play football. It’s great to watch the guys. Seeing the stuff they did last year was great and just to help the guys from the sideline it was a great opportunity for me and I feel like it’s helping the leadership this year as well,” Wesley said.
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Graham Baakko is a writer for Vanderbilt Commodores On SI, primarily covering football, basketball and baseball. Graham is a recent graduate from the University of Alabama, where he wrote for The Crimson White, WVUA-FM, WVUA 23 as he covered a variety of Crimson Tide sports. He also covered South Carolina athletics as a sportswriting intern for GamecockCentral.
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