The situation in Nashville has become dire since the last film room was published. Following an underwhelming 2-0 start to the season, the Vanderbilt Commodores have dropped three consecutive games and fallen below .500. First was a road loss to Wake Forest in which the defense allowed 288 yards on the ground. Then came the shocking loss at UNLV where the Commodores surrendered 40 points to a Mountain West team led by a backup quarterback.
In their most recent outing, the Black and Gold opened SEC play with a 45-28 loss to Kentucky only a year after beating them in Lexington. What changed in one year? How could this happen? The most obvious answer — and the most cited one — is the man under center for the Black and Gold. With seven interceptions and a 34.3 QBR through five games, sophomore AJ Swann certainly hasn’t gotten off to the type of season for which he, the coaching staff and Vanderbilt fans were hoping. But, is he the reason Clark Lea’s squad is underperforming?
The answer is both yes and no. Would Vanderbilt be better if it had a more accurate, more polished passer leading the offense? Of course it would. But would the Commodores be undefeated through five weeks or poised to contend in the SEC East if they had one? Probably not. Why? They’d still have the same porous offensive line.
With as much experience playing together as the veteran unit has, the Vanderbilt offensive line should theoretically be able to hold up in nonconference play and perform well enough against lesser SEC opponents (like Kentucky) to give the Commodores a chance at winning a few ball games. Through five weeks, the exact opposite has proven true.
The first blow came after the opener against Hawaii when starting right tackle Junior Uzebu went down with an injury. Four games later, the graduate student hasn’t seen the field again in what Lea has described as a longer-term injury. Even then, the Commodores are starting one sophomore, two juniors, a senior and a graduate student in the trenches. The results — in terms of pass blocking, run blocking, snap quality, sacks, tackles for loss or whatever metric one wants to use — have not been good.
Pass blocking
It’s easy to criticize Swann for making the kinds of throws that resulted in two Kentucky pick sixes and three total interceptions last Saturday. Many of the incomplete passes that Swann attempted against Kentucky, UNLV and Wake Forest have been wildly off target or dangerously thrown without resulting in a turnover. The sophomore’s inaccuracy would exist no matter the status of the offensive line, but one has to wonder just how much more calm and collected the second-year starter would be if the pocket wasn’t constantly under the pressure of collapsing.
Watch some of the busted protections by the Vanderbilt offensive line in the losses to Kentucky and UNLV. The footage has been slowed down to half speed to make it easier to observe the line’s breakdowns. Swann’s first interception against the Wildcats wasn’t an advisable throw, but he would’ve had the time to make a better read or throw the ball away if his offensive line didn’t immediately allow him to be swarmed by two defenders.
Though not an issue against Kentucky, the inability of centers Julian Hernandez, a graduate student, and Xavier Castillo, a junior, to provide clean snaps was inarguably part of the Commodores’ offensive woes in Las Vegas. Swann hasn’t done himself any favors this season, but his offensive line hasn’t either.
Run blocking
Despite completing only 16 of 40 passes and ending with a miserable 4.7 QBR against Kentucky, Swann still averaged almost a full yard-per-attempt more than the Vanderbilt running game. Even subtracting Swann’s own rushing attempts leaves the sophomore with more yards-per-attempt than the combined ground game of Patrick Smith, Sedrick Alexander, Jayden McGowan and Chase Gillespie.
That’s an incredible statistic. Swann played with a hurt elbow, had three turnovers and completed fewer than half of his passes, and yet, for gaining yards, he was still a better bet for Lea and Joey Lynch than keeping the ball on the ground. The reason is the exact same: the offensive line.
Through five games, the Commodores are averaging 108.6 rushing yards per game on 3.6 yards per carry. The former is in the bottom 10 of Power 5 teams while the latter puts the Commodores at 11th worst amongst the same cohort. South Carolina is the only SEC team with a worse running game than Vanderbilt, and its problem is the exact same — an offensive line so terrible that it allowed nine sacks to North Carolina in the season opener.
Alexander and Smith are talented backs with the ability to anchor a quality rushing game. With Swann’s arm strength and a cadre of receivers that can get downfield in no time, opposing defenses should be sufficiently stretched out to allow for a passable ground attack. The reality has been the opposite. With zero space to maneuver after the handoff, Vanderbilt’s running backs are left with deflated stats that may cause them to take the Ray Davis route and hightail it out of Nashville in search of greener pastures.
The devil you know
This last set of film has nothing to do with Swann’s performance and everything to do with Vanderbilt fans on X, formerly known as Twitter, calling for him to be benched. Doing so would put Ken Seals, former Commodore starter in 2020 and 2021, back under center. To get a glimpse of how that might turn out — and not in the garbage time scenario Seals was thrown into against Kentucky when the Wildcats had already won and the defense wasn’t trying as hard — one only needs to go back one week to the third quarter of the loss against UNLV. After Swann went down with the elbow injury that still plagues him, Seals got a shot to prove why he shouldn’t have been benched the first (or the second) time.
As demonstrated by the above footage, he didn’t exactly pass the test with flying colors. Having said that, Seals is a more accurate passer with more in-game experience. That much is definitively true. However, despite that accuracy, he does nowhere near enough to move the needle for the Commodores this season such that a bowl game would be a reasonable expectation. As a senior, he’s also not the long-term solution to Vanderbilt’s problems. If he was, he’d be starting right now. Instead, he was the backup to Mike Wright who himself was the backup to Swann last season.
Seals probably has a higher floor than Swann. It’s unlikely that he would throw multiple pick sixes in a game and completely shut the door on a comeback attempt. At the same time, it’s also true that he has nowhere near the arm strength nor the ceiling of Swann; and, if this season’s already a wash for the Commodores’ bowl hopes, it’s time to start looking towards development for the future once again. That means playing Swann, good or bad, and giving him the opportunity to develop — no matter how long that takes.
