On July 15, Vanderbilt Football head coach Clark Lea made the trip to Dallas for the annual Southeastern Conference Football Media Days. With him came three players who have been with Lea from the very beginning: offensive lineman Gunnar Hansen, defensive back CJ Taylor and linebacker Langston Patterson.
At last year’s media days, Lea said that Vanderbilt’s goal in 2023 was postseason play. He addressed that same goal in his opening remarks on Monday.
“As I’ve said in the past, success is seldom linear,” Lea said at the SEC Football Media Days. “Unfortunately, we dipped in our performance and fell well short of our goal.”
Throughout his three-plus years as Vanderbilt’s leader, Lea has never shied away from telling the truth. 2023 saw the Commodores regress following a 5-7 2022 season that saw them snap a 26-game SEC losing streak with back-to-back wins over Kentucky and Florida. After ripping off two wins over Hawaii and Alabama A&M to start the 2023 season, Vanderbilt lost 10 straight. This was the second 2-10 record during Lea’s brief three year tenure. Perhaps no team is a better example of how non-linear success is than Vanderbilt.
Since his hiring, Lea has often spoken about intentionality — starting each day, week, month and season with a goal in mind and working towards that goal. While the on-field outputs will fluctuate (as evidenced by the drop from 5-7 to 2-10), there are things that Lea and Co. can control, and a steadfast mindset is one of those things
Lea knows that building this program back up is a slow process, and he knows that growth is no easy task. Still, his experience as both a player and a coach over the years has shown him a path towards improvement.
“It’s a core belief of mine that challenges present opportunities for growth,” Lea said. “With that in mind, at the conclusion of the last season, I set out to understand more about our shortcomings. I approached every decision this offseason looking to answer two important questions: ‘What am I meant to learn from this adversity, and how can we use it as a catalyst to our future success?’”
This perspective has helped bring Lea from a graduate assistant at UCLA to a head coach in the SEC, and is more relevant now than ever. With the implementation of Name, Image and Likeness (NIL) and the emergence of the transfer portal, Division I Football is in a completely different world than it was just two years ago. Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) eclipsed 3,200 transfers during the 2023 offseason, nearly double what it was in 2018-2019 (1,717), per 247 Sports.
Lea harped on this during his opening remarks on Monday.
“We’ve expedited the transformation of our roster,” Lea said. “It is required that we fully embrace changes in the college football landscape and actively participate in both the transfer portal and NIL. Falling behind in the NIL and transfer portal spaces erased much of the progress that we made in our first two years.”
Lea is aware of his shortcomings in the portal and NIL, and he’s worked with Vanderbilt’s administration to revamp the roster and get on the path to redemption. The Commodores brought in 23 players through the portal, more than triple their previous record of six in 2022, when 247 Sports started tracking transfer classes. Headlining the class are two high-profile signal-callers in redshirt sophomore Nate Johnson (Utah) and graduate Diego Pavia (NMSU).
“There’s a quarterback competition that we’re undergoing right now,” Lea said. “We’re glad to have them just like we’re glad to have the other additions to our roster.”
Nate Johnson was the highest-rated transfer (4-star, per 247 Sports) that Vanderbilt brought in. While largely inexperienced, he brings a speed and rushing ability that Vanderbilt missed gravely after losing Mike Wright. On the flip side, Pavia offers experience, consistency and a sneaky athleticism after a hyper-productive 2023 season with New Mexico State. In his senior season, the Albuquerque, N.M. native threw for 2,973 yards and 26 touchdowns while adding 928 yards and 5 touchdowns on the ground. The two are expected to bring out the best in each other.
Among the other additions are safety Randon Fontenette (TCU), wide receiver Jeremiah Dillon (Ole Miss) and former cornerback turned wide receiver Micah Bell (Notre Dame).
Lea’s changes didn’t just come at the player level, as the program underwent significant changes from the top down. Out went offensive coordinator Joey Lynch and defensive coordinator Nick Howell. In came offensive coordinator Tim Beck and senior offensive advisor/chief consultant to the head coach Jerry Kill. Kill was previously the Aggies’ head coach, and Beck his offensive coordinator. Kill and Beck, like Pavia, came from New Mexico State after a 10-5 season that was highlighted by a bowl game appearance and a victory over Auburn.
“My attention was really grabbed after they went to Auburn after we played [Auburn] and were able to steal a win on the road there,” said Lea. “I probably watched that game 9 or 10 times. I wanted to see the anatomy of what [Kill] had built. I saw a defense that was sound, solid and simple. I saw an offense that was creative in design, but not gimmicky. I saw a quarterback that was a maniac.”
Led by Kill, New Mexico State ranked second in Conference USA in yards (413.7) and points (27.5) per game. After Vanderbilt posted an SEC-worst 319.0 yards per game last season, Kill and Beck represented exactly the change Lea was looking for.
Lea also adjusted the team’s strength and conditioning program, as he brought Robert Stiner in from Georgia Southern to serve as the director of football sports performance. The difference has been night and day.
“One of the things that I feel like is most impressive is that the speed has increased, but so has the weight,” Lea said. “When you look at our edge players, [the] average weight gain from January to now [is an] addition of 16.4 pounds. That’s impressive. You talk about the tight end group averaging 12 pounds of weight gain. I can go down the list. What you realize is we’re becoming a faster team, becoming a bigger team.”
For a team that’s struggled immensely to keep up with the pure physical talent of many SEC athletes, this development cannot be understated. Not even by the players
“All it is is work in there and just seeing the numbers,” said senior offensive lineman Gunnar Hansen of the team’s hard work in the weight room. “Just getting bigger, faster, stronger every day, and we see the numbers because it displays outside.”
2024 isn’t quite a make-or-break year for Lea, but the expectation — as it has been since he arrived — is that Vanderbilt will continue to get better (and that this year, the record will show it). With all of the changes and ambiguity that Vanderbilt Football has dealt with since the end of the 2023 season, it would be easy for Lea to focus on the negatives and get overwhelmed.
Instead, Lea chose to highlight a positive that he feels will be essential for the program’s continued development: spirit.
“Roster transformation is about more than enhancing talent and skill. It’s also been important for us to address the spirit of our program and shed the mindset of our past,” Lea said. “Of our 120 players, 106 have been recruited into my vision for success at Vanderbilt. This will be the first season in which the majority of the team signed up for the mission we’re on.”
Lea knows that challenges will present themselves in 2024 but his goals must remain the same.
“People first. Mission always,” Lea said.
