Vanderbilt Football Preseason Game Prediction: Auburn – si.com

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Vanderbilt football’s conference slate does not offer it a kind start this fall in the first season of a nine-game conference schedule.
The Commodores will play nine straight SEC opponents from the end of September through the month of November, beginning with a trip to Auburn Sept. 26.
A lot has changed since the two met up last November when the Commodores beat the Tigers 45-38 in an overtime thriller. Vanderbilt has a lot of new faces in starting positions this season, including the quarterback. For Auburn, it has a new head coach with Alex Golesh and will have a revamped roster that the program is hopeful will result in an improved season.
So far in the summer game prediction series, Vandy On SI projected Vanderbilt to start the 2026 season 3-0 with wins over Austin Peay, Delaware and NC State, but the Commodores Week 4 game is the hardest in the first month of the season.
There are a couple of things to watch for in Vanderbilt’s matchup against Auburn this season. First and foremost, who will be playing quarterback by the time Sept. 26 rolls around? It is difficult to project how the quarterback competition unfolds through nonconference play, but regardless of who starts between Jared Curtis or Blaze Berlowitz, it will be his first start in a hostile environment.
When thinking about that, the question becomes how either of those quarterbacks composes himself in his first SEC road start.
Another thing to watch in the game is the progression of Auburn’s offense with all the new pieces it now has in Golesh’s first season. Golesh brought his dual-threat quarterback Byrum Brown along with him to lead Auburn this season. Auburn also brought over wide receivers Keshaun Singleton and Jeremiah Koger from South Florida.
The key for Vanderbilt in this game defensively is going to be preventing Auburn’s new-look offense from creating explosive plays or plenty of chunk gains. More specifically, Vanderbilt cannot allow a quarterback like Brown to become a threat in both the running and passing game. Making him one dimensional is going to be of the utmost importance.
From an offensive perspective, Vanderbilt will need to get off to a fast start. Allowing the Auburn crowd to get into the game from a Vanderbilt turnover or lack of offensive execution early in the game could end up being detrimental.
Vanderbilt did not have trouble against an Auburn defense that was No. 29 in the FBS last season, but the Commodores will have far less experience running the offense this season. With DJ Durkin now fully focused on the Tigers’ defense, it should be interesting to see how that impacts the matchup at the end of September.
This game could go either way. The storyline of Vanderbilt’s quarterback play is going to be a huge factor in the result of this game. But that is a difficult element to project.
Ultimately, this could be a game where the inexperience of Vanderbilt’s quarterbacks shows through a critical mistake late in the game. Contrast that with the chemistry and experience Golesh has with his quarterback and some of his receivers that moved to Auburn.
Brown is going to make a few extra plays on offense and help Auburn win the game. It is going to be close, but I think Auburn wins in the end.
Prediction: Auburn 24, Vanderbilt 20
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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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