This The Antithesis of What Clark Lea Preaches. If That Doesn't Change, Vandy Will Keep Getting Its "A** Kicked" – Sports Illustrated

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NASHVILLE—Don’t worry, everybody. Vanderbilt football has all the answers! Just wait until it fixes the little errors that it believes are bogging it down! Just wait until it finds an identity and learns how to win! It knows it’s getting closer! Better performance is coming. Surely the wins will, too! 
Can you sense the sarcasm? 
How about now? 
Time to stop believing this Vanderbilt team when it talks. Time to stop pretending like this Vanderbilt team is what it says it is. It’s not a national championship contender. It’s not a College Football Playoff contender. It’s not going to be one of the best Vanderbilt teams to ever play. It’s not getting closer to winning in this league. It may not even be a bowl team. 
Unless something drastic changes, this is going to be a bad season at FirstBank Stadium. And, why should anyone believe that any drastic changes are coming? 
It’s been six games and it’s yet to play anywhere near a complete game. It looked like the junior varsity team running up on a group of college football players on Saturday. Ole Miss backup Deuce Knight was in the game at the beginning of the fourth quarter. Vanderbilt was humiliated and got its lunch money taken by a team that got its own lunch money taken the last time it played. It claimed that it belongs in the same conversations with teams like Ole Miss, yet it looked like it shouldn’t even be on the same field as Pete Goulding’s team on Saturday. 
What it did Saturday undermined everything that it built its program on in 2024 and 2025. This looked like the same old Vanderbilt that appeared to be a relic of the past. It was the first time in a long time where a Vanderbilt team was out of a game when it ran into the tunnel heading into the half. It was the first time since 2023 that it looked like it didn’t belong on the field with an SEC team. 
“We got our a** kicked,” Vanderbilt coach Clark Lea said. 
Lea is right. 
Where was the confidence? Where was the group that could compete with anyone that it ran up on in this place? Did their talent and confidence get zapped away into an innocent bystander like Kevin Durant in the Thunderstruck movie? 
The problem here isn't that Vanderbilt is making mistakes, it's that those mistakes are evidence that it struggles in all the areas it wants to pride itself on. It's also that its best players, the ones that should know how to win after having roles on the 10-3 team a year ago, are the ones making a number of the mistakes. It's not as much an issue of inexperienece as it is a program quickly straying from what made it great.
The worst part, this group doesn’t appear to have any identity. It prided itself on doing the little things well and winning in the margins. It says it wants to build its offense on a strong run game and ball control offense. It believes its best path to winning is limiting explosive plays. It did none of that. It didn’t play smart football, either. 
It wasn’t smart during the week, either–even though Lea said it had a good week of practice–this group didn’t even hedge its bet heading into the week. It legitimately seemed to think it was going to win. It was borderline disrespectful to Ole Miss during the week. Remember when Bryce Cowan said that it wouldn’t take anything special to slow down Ole Miss quarterback Trinidad Chambliss? What about when Ja’Cory Thomas–who actually did play well individually, to his credit–said that the only impression he had of Ole Miss’ defense on film was that it offered a lot of green grass and that there were a lot of plays to be made? 
Yes, they really said that. They were really brash enough to believe that they were going to be able to talk like that about this team and not get run off the field. Well, wake up, guys. They are way better than you are right now, and they proved it Saturday. Now this group has to figure out how to make this feel more like 2025 than 2023. 
“We haven't felt this way in a long time here, and yet we have to recognize we're not above it,” Lea said. “If we don't clean the football up we're not going to have a chance at the results.” 
Junior Sherrill said he wanted to prove he’s the most dynamic player in the country with the ball in his hands–he finished with 55 yards and five catches. Sedrick Alexander said he wanted to prove he has the best hands in America–he had one reception for seven yards on Saturday. Vanderbilt’s linebackers said this is the best linebacker room Lea has had. Chris Klenakis talked all offseason about how much further along this offensive line was than its group a year ago. Cowan said Tuesday that this may be the most talented team he’s been a part of. 
They have no proof of concept to defend any of that. 
Ole Miss is in a competitive window and belongs in College Football Playoff conversations. Vanderbilt–as much as it doesn’t want to admit it–is in a rebuilding year. This is all about building for next year and working to get the right core around Jared Curtis. It’s about generating a sample size that will allow Barton Simmons to figure out who is going to be part of the next great Vanderbilt football team, because this one sure as heck isn’t it. 
Clark Lea so badly wanted this to be a great year to build off of Vanderbilt’s 10-win 2025 season and wanted to do right by its veteran guys that have been part of winning, but this team just doesn’t have it. It’s more talented and has better infrastructure than it did in 2023, but it looks a whole lot like that team these days. 
It did on a late first-half third down when it had Ole Miss in third and 17 and let it generate two-consecutive explosive passing plays for touchdowns. It did when the ball soared through the air after bouncing off of Junior Sherrill’s hands around the line of scrimmage and flew downfield into the unsuspecting hands of Ole Miss cornerback Antonio Kite. It sure as heck did when offensive lineman Clinton Azubuike hit an Ole Miss player on the goal line, got an unsportsmanlike penalty that all but wiped out a touchdown scoring opportunity and was subsequently chewed out on the sideline by Lea. 
How about when Jared Curtis held on to the ball too long around his own goal line, fumbled and Ole Miss picked it up for a touchdown? How about when Evan Hampton fumbled a kickoff on the next play and led Ole Miss to another touchdown. What about any of the 11 plays that contributed to Vanderbilt’s 92 yards lost in penalties. 
“It’s unacceptable,” Vanderbilt defensive lineman Issa Ouattara said in regard to Vanderbilt’s penalty issues. “You can’t play that type of game and expect to win. It’s going to take looking in the mirror and asking yourself the hard questions and it will take confrontation and it will be addressed.” 
This was likely never going to be a winning year because of Vanderbilt’s lack of an experienced quarterback, but this isn’t even about him. This is about how undisciplined this Vanderbilt team is and how it appears to be entirely outclassed at a number of position groups. It’s the antithesis of a number of Lea’s philosophies and doesn’t represent him well in any way. It’s bad enough to beg the question of whether it needs to re-evaluate some of the systems it has in place. 
Saturday was that bad. It started with a clip of a player’s family member referring to those that run Vanderbilt’s program as “clowns” going semi viral and ended with a disgruntled Lea on the podium. Everything in between was an absolute mess and directly contradicted every declaration this team has made since it’s gotten together. 
“It’s very frustrating,” Vanderbilt running back MK Young said in regard to Vanderbilt’s Saturday performance. “We shot ourselves in the foot so many times, we’ve got to fix those mistakes if we want to be who we are.” 
But, who is this Vanderbilt team now? It probably isn't who it says it is. 
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Joey Dwyer is the lead writer on Vanderbilt Commodores On SI. He found his first love in college sports at nearby Lipscomb University and decided to make a career of telling its best stories. He got his start doing a Notre Dame basketball podcast from his basement as a 14-year-old during COVID and has since aimed to make that 14-year-old proud. Dwyer has covered Vanderbilt sports for three years and previously worked for 247 Sports and Rivals. He contributes to Seth Davis' Hoops HQ, Basket Under Review and Mainstreet Nashville.
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