Vanderbilt Football Proved to Be Real Contender in Win Over Missouri; Column – Sports Illustrated

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NASHVILLE—It wasn’t what College Gameday imagined when it decided to come to West End. It wasn’t what Vanderbilt envisioned when it thought up the path to its victory against an Eli Drinkwitz-coached Missouri team in Clark Lea’s tenure. It wasn’t the level of play that it believed it had to have in order to pull off a win in a game of this magnitude. 
Yet, there it was celebrating on the turf field at FirstBank Stadium in the moments after the final buzzer sounded on Saturday afternoon. When it looked up, the scoreboard read 17-10, Vanderbilt. 
If an onlooker only watched Saturday afternoon’s game and hadn’t seen Vanderbilt all season, they wouldn’t have believed this group could get anywhere near the College Football Playoff. Everything about Saturday afternoon was ugly for this Vanderbilt team, except the final result. 
That says something about it. 
That was an ugly win and yet it was a win and we’re not gonna complain about it,” Lea said. “I think what it says is this is a tough team that has the courage to be resilient and to step into the type of performance we need to win and the mission is winning.” 
Perhaps it isn’t what a performance in which Missouri nearly dominated the time of possession, outgained Vanderbilt, forced a turnover deep in Vanderbilt’s territory and nearly forced a fumble on the goalline in the final moments of the game would indicate about this team on the surface, though. 
Great teams do what Vanderbilt did on Saturday. Not the fumbling, sluggish and careless things. The winning. The staying alive. The ability to avoid exercising the demons of its past. This Vanderbilt team is a new Vanderbilt more than anyone could’ve imagined and what it did Saturday night proved it perhaps more than any game it’s played this season. 
“Championship teams go through games like this,” Vanderbilt quarterback Diego Pavia said. “It’s just how you prevail when you go through those hard times and when you play complimentary football.” 
Say what you will about Missouri’s lackadaisical play at times or the fact that it was forced to play with its third-string quarterback, but don’t say Vanderbilt finding a way to win against an AP Top 15 team with the nation’s eyes on West End doesn’t say something about it. 
Every College Football Playoff team has to find a way to win in a game that it doesn’t have its best in if it’s going to get into the 12-team field. The performance is merely inevitable. The good teams lose it and wonder what could’ve been, the great teams scratch and claw until they find a way to win and don’t let anyone steal their moment. 
A mere two-inch difference could’ve changed this thing for Vanderbilt. Had Beau Pribula scored on fourth and one instead of being stuffed by Miles Capers for a turnover on downs, it may be a different game. If Missouri’s hail mary attempt wasn’t dropped, this thing would’ve went to overtime and Missouri would’ve had all the momentum. If CJ Heard hadn’t ripped the ball out of Jamal Roberts’ hands, Missouri could’ve run down the clock and won in the most anticlimactic way possible. It didn’t, though. 
Perhaps Vanderbilt just demonstrated that it’s a great team. 
“We’re not getting where we want to go if we don’t find ways to win games like this tonight,” Lea said. “This is about a team that believes in one another and is really tough and it’s about a coaching staff that has built relationships with players that allows them to have impact in those moments. I don’t think there was ever a second on that field where there was doubt or that was fear.” 
At the very least, this Vanderbilt team is alive and kicking as a result of that mindset. As a result of what happened Saturday, Lea’s team will likely be ranked inside the AP Top 10 for the first time since 1937 and will be projected by most to find its way into the College Football Playoff. We’re past the point of having to acknowledge how this is different than Vanderbilt’s past at this point, this iteration of its football program is good enough to no longer have to carry that burden. It should have the luxury to be evaluated within the context of what it is rather than what the preconceived notions that the teams that came before it provide. 
This Vanderbilt team is in completely uncharted territory. It appears to be nearly invincible.
Perhaps it will play poorly, it will still  win. All the key pieces of its roster outside of defensive lineman Issa Ouattara are still healthy. There’s no limit as to what it can do. Some programs only get this run once in a lifetime, that’s why they call it a Golden Era. 
Who knows what happens beyond this or if this is as good as it gets for this program. It’s got some sort of magic behind it, though. Perhaps it didn’t have enough magic to impress all that many people with its play on Saturday, but it had enough to write another chapter in college football’s most compelling storybook. 
“It’s head, body, head, body,” Vanderbilt running back. “We knew what type of game it was going to be and that we were just going to have to battle it out.”
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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