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With 32 seconds to go in Vanderbilt football’s game against Mississippi State, it looked like the direction of the game was heading toward disaster for the Commodores.
Vanderbilt’s lead that was once 16-0 had been cut all the way down to 25-23 and its opponent was going for the tie to force overtime. Up to that point, Vanderbilt’s defense had played its best game of conference play despite the points it surrendered in the second half. Considering the way the season has been going for Vanderbilt, it would have been reasonable to assume disaster was coming to rip the hearts out of Clark Lea’s team.
But something happened that Vanderbilt has not seen often this season that it did see pretty often a season ago. A stop in the biggest moment of the game in a got to have it spot. Vanderbilt forced Mississippi State quarterback AJ Swann to loft the ball out of bounds thanks to great coverage from safety Ricardo Jones.
For the first time since September, a play in a crucial time went Vanderbilt’s way and resulted in a victory Vanderbilt can go the next three weeks carrying momentum with.
The win means more than just Vanderbilt’s first conference win of the season. Sure, it has not been the season it wanted. But the Commodores looked like they found a couple things they can build on going forward. That is something more valuable than anything for the program right now.
“The two moments, to me, the forced field goal and the two-point conversion stop in the fourth quarter were moments that define the kind of defense we want to be,” Vanderbilt head coach Clark Lea said. “We want to be resilient. I’m proud of those guys.”
The defense is one of those things it can build off of. Was it a perfect defensive game? For the first half it pretty much was before things got dicey after halftime. The Commodores made Mississippi State look helpless through the first two quarters with four three-and-outs forced and an interception.
Then came the dicey part. Swann and his offense started to figure things out and put points on the board. But in the end, Vanderbilt got the stops it needed to. It was almost too similar to what its defense did a year ago. Opponents could rack up the yardage on Vanderbilt, but when push came to shove, Lea’s team always had the response.
It was the closest thing to a point-limitation identity defense Vanderbilt has set itself to be. The perfect definition of the bend, don’t break defense the program had in 2025.
Identity has been hard to come by on both sides of the ball for Vanderbilt this season. Saturday, it had a much more clear identity than it had in the previous eight games.
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And identity came in multiple forms.
The Commodores had their best game running the ball probably all season, certainly their best one against a power conference team. Vanderbilt ran for 160 yards and a touchdown on 52 rushing attempts. And the best part about it is Sedrick Alexander and MK Young both had 15 or more carries apiece.
The offensive line found a push that it simply has not gotten all season and it did it against a tough defensive line, a top 35 run defense in fact. It was not the greatest run game in college football this season, but it was good enough to where it took pressure off Jared Curtis and the rest of the offense.
To win games in any sport, a team needs to have an identity. Vanderbilt made mistakes and narrowly avoided disaster, but there should not be any apologies for winning. It did positive things it simply has not been able to do in a game this season.
It was not the most complete game by any means, either, but it was the closest thing to a complete game Vanderbilt has played because it established an identity.
“This team to the last second, every blade of grass. We played the way that we wanted to play at Vanderbilt. We’ve been talking a lot about three-phase efforts. That was a three-phase effort tonight,” Lea said.
The word of the weekend for Vanderbilt is “resilience.” The Commodores showed an identity by being resilient. Not letting the negative plays in the second half snowball into a loss at the end.
The question, though, is whether it can keep it up. The road ahead for the final three games is one of the most difficult finishes to a season any team has in college football with two teams firmly in the playoff race left on the schedule.
Resilience can yield growth and produce maturity in teams. The Commodores learned and grew Saturday evening. Maybe they can wear resilience proudly and do it again over the next three weeks. It is going to need to use what it found against Mississippi State and build much more on it.
“We are starting to tone in on an identity. And if we can get even tighter and more in focus that way, there’s more for this group ahead,” Lea 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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