Exclusive: Miles Capers Has Plenty he Wants to Accomplish in Year Six at Vanderbilt – Sports Illustrated

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When Vanderbilt football EDGE rusher Miles Capers first got to campus ahead of the 2021 season, head coach Clark Lea was kicking off his tenure in Nashville. A lot of time has passed since he stepped got to Vanderbilt, but he has plenty of unfinished business going into his sixth season.
Capers is one of the foundational pieces that helped get Vanderbilt to where it currently is as a program, along with his head coach. Capers has seen Vanderbilt evolve into a program that was 2-10 in 2023 to 10-3 in 2025 and just a few spots outside of the playoff picture.
Coming up just short of the playoffs, of course, hurt everyone involved in the program. But given the peaks and valleys Capers has experienced over the years, it seems like nobody else on the roster has more motivation to get the Commodores to a place they have never been.
“From a team perspective, obviously we want to make the playoffs and go to the natty and win it and also do better than last year,” Capers told Vandy On SI.
Being left out of the playoffs still stings going into this season and players like Capers want to carry the program over the hump this season. Vanderbilt’s 10-2 regular season was not enough to make it into a 12-team playoff bracket. The Commodores felt like they should have been in, and even tried to schedule a 13th game to prove their postseason case.
As for what Vanderbilt can do this season to make the playoffs and improve on its 10-2 regular season record in 2025, Capers told Vandy On SI the team is going to have to do a better job of keying in on the small details.
But Capers also has big goals for himself this season, despite the accomplishments he has made in his first five seasons.
“I really want to be All-SEC. I got some records I want to break here and some records I want to break in the NCAA. But that’s really me. I want to be All-American and get drafted,” Capers said. “I want to break the sack record at Vandy and the forced fumble record.”
There is no denying that Capers has high aspirations for himself going into this fall. For his career, Capers has 8.5 sacks and four forced fumbles. He had a career-high 4.5 sacks last season.
The current Vanderbilt football single-season sack record is 12 sacks by Alan Young in the 1993 season. Young also holds the program record for career sacks with 21.5. In other words, Capers would need 13.0 sacks to tie the career record and 13.5 to break it and 12.5 break the single-season record. So, if Capers gets 13.5 sacks this season he would break both.
In terms of the forced fumble record, it is doable for a player like Capers. Bryce Cowan tied the program’s single-season forced fumble record with five of them this past season. It will not be easy for Capers to tie or break it, but it is not an impossible record for him to break.
Those goals are ambitious, even for a player like Capers. But Capers has the right mentality going into this season. If he were to accomplish those records, it feels like there would be no doubt he would be named to an All-SEC team and seemingly being named an All-American as well. 
Capers helped bring Vanderbilt back to national relevancy in college football. The Commodores are not a program that is going to be shy about their goals as long as Lea has players like Capers in his program.
For Capers, all the personal accolades would be great if he achieved them. But nothing would mean more to him than leading his school to a place they have never been before.
“I still want us to get to where we want to go, like the National Championship just to put the icing on top for the world to see. We just have to keep on focusing on the internal and just forget the external,” Capers told Vandy On SI.
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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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