On a sunny Saturday morning on Aug. 31, a sellout crowd poured into FirstBank Stadium for Vanderbilt Football’s season opener against Virginia Tech. It marked the first time Vanderbilt sold out a nonconference game since 2017.
In theory, a sellout sounds like it would offer the Commodores a massive advantage (like all 15 of its SEC counterparts). In reality, though, it wasn’t an advantage at all.
In recent years, a complete sellout at a football game on West End can only mean one thing — a boisterous visiting crowd taking up over 50% of the seats in the stadium. The dual threat of tourism in Nashville exploding and its convenient location in the heart of the South makes the city an easy target for a lot of prominent college football programs’ fan bases. Such was the case yesterday, as the Hokie faithful made the six-hour drive from Blacksburg, Va., to take over Vanderbilt’s home turf.
Most don’t expect me to be as big of a Vanderbilt sports fan as I am. After all, I write 99% of my articles as an unbiased reporter, but the reality is that I was driven to The Hustler because of my love for the Commodores. I’m a journalist now, but a fan forever.
As a fan, it was tough to walk past the droves of Virginia Tech loyals on my way to the press box. It was tough to read all of the troll posts from Hokie fan accounts on X over the past few months. It was tough to grapple with the offense’s struggles throughout fall camp and scrimmages. My mind couldn’t help but wander repetitively to the same foregone conclusions as always:
More of the same.
Something was different about the game, though. Something new. Something that I’ve yet to see in my four years at Vanderbilt. Something that left me smiling — and, to be completely honest, a little emotional — from my seat in the press box.
Confidence.
Perhaps it was new starting quarterback Diego Pavia and his unrivaled confidence that rubbed off on the rest of the team. Vanderbilt had an unfamiliar — but more-than-welcome — swagger about it throughout Saturday’s affair, and it rode that very swagger towards its biggest win in years.
Cool as a cucumber
“I’m not supposed to be here,” Pavia said at the postgame press conference on Saturday.
Pavia was never meant to be an SEC quarterback, and he’d be the first to admit it. The 6’0” signal-caller had no offers out of high school and ultimately had to walk on at JUCO New Mexico Military Institute. He won the starting role there before receiving an offer from Jerry Kill and the New Mexico State Aggies. After two highly productive years there, Pavia made another jump, this time following his old coach Kill and offensive coordinator Tim Beck to Vanderbilt.
The Albuquerque, N.M., native has had to fight for every opportunity to play high-level football, and in doing so, he developed a sense of self few could match.
“I feel like I’m the best player in the country,” Pavia said. “I want to show it, week in and week out.”
He certainly showed it this weekend, completing 12-of-16 passes for 190 yards and 2 touchdowns through the air while adding 26 rushes for 104 yards and a score on the ground. Though 294 total yards and 3 total touchdowns are certainly impressive numbers, anyone watching the game knew that his statistics weren’t what made the performance special.
Pavia made every play he needed to make. Vanderbilt went 5-for-12 on third down and converted its only fourth down attempt while also scoring points on all four of its red zone trips. The team stayed clean in the turnover game as well, logging zero giveaways (something it was only able to do twice through all of 2023).
By the fourth quarter, Vanderbilt’s offense had completely stalled out. It had gone ice cold between the middle of the third quarter and the end of the fourth, punting on three straight possessions as the Hokies scored 17 unanswered points. It seemed like the Commodores had regressed to their typical performance, as though the metaphorical rug had been pulled out from underneath them. But with Vanderbilt down 27-20 and just over four minutes left in the game, Pavia led the team down the field for a six-play, 70-yard touchdown drive.
For Pavia, there was never a doubt. He was calm, cool and collected through the fourth quarter and overtime. In the biggest moment of the most impactful Vanderbilt game of this decade, Pavia was poised, and he delivered. It has been a long time since the Commodores have had a quarterback that can do that.
Seven fishes
Head coach Clark Lea took over the defense this year after former coordinator Nick Howell’s departure last winter. The expectation was that the defense had turned a corner thanks to the effort of Lea, the rest of the defensive staff and strength and conditioning coach Robert Stiner. Vanderbilt’s performance yesterday surpassed expectations. The Black and Gold front seven produced its most complete game of the Lea era.
Looking at the box score (four sacks and eight tackles for loss), the numbers are good, but they don’t even tell the full story. Four sacks and eight tackles for loss are certainly impressive numbers, but it was more than that.
The Commodores lived in the backfield on Saturday. Lea’s group consistently won battles on the edge while shooting linebackers through the gap, creating pressure after pressure and making Kyron Drones’ life far more difficult than expected. Beyond that was the timeliness of these pressures. Every time a big Vanderbilt needed a stop, Linus Zunk, Khordae Sydnor, Miles Capers and Co. found their way past the trenches and made a play.
The lone turnover of the game, which shifted the early momentum in Vanderbilt’s favor, came on a tip drill after linebacker Bryan Longwell made his way into the backfield on a pass rush. When a play needed to be made, the Vanderbilt pass rush made it home.
Now, let’s talk about the run defense. The Commodores ranked 123rd in the nation in yards-per-carry allowed in 2023 (5.09) and checked in at 107th in rushing yards allowed per game (175.33). Those numbers dropped to 2.5 and 75 on Saturday.
Again — and this can’t be understated — Vanderbilt was slated for improvement thanks to Lea’s new implementations, but its performance today was unfathomable. The run defense just had its best performance against a Power Four team since November 2022. Not to mention they did it against a backfield tandem of Drones (who ran for 642 yards in 2023) and Bhayshul Tuten (who will almost certainly be playing in the NFL next year).
For a unit that ranked toward the bottom of FBS in pretty much every major defensive statistic last year, Vanderbilt certainly turned some heads this weekend.
Careful cooking
It is easy to get carried away after a win like this. Very few people (myself excluded) had Vanderbilt, a 13-point home underdog, winning this game. For the Commodore faithful that have stuck through years and years of (putting it generously) mediocre football, this win marks a stepping stone towards a promising future.
Lea knows that while this performance is an excellent building block, his team still has work to do. After the game, he harped that this is only game 1 out of 12 (or perhaps more) for Vanderbilt.
“We’re not done with our process, and there’s still a lot of hard work ahead,” said Lea. “To get to where I see this program going, it’s going to take a little more.”
He’s right. Justin Hershey, Bryce Smith and Andrew Wilf, the honorable sports editors before me, know that I’m a serial believer in Vanderbilt. I’ll take any chance to be optimistic, but I’ve learned to temper expectations. There’s still a lot that Vanderbilt needs to work on.
For starters, outside of Quincy Skinner Jr., the Commodores’ pass catchers left much to be desired. Skinner Jr.’s touchdown catch will most certainly be hung in the make-believe Vanderbilt Football Louvre, but even he struggled over long periods of time in this game. Junior Sherrill and Loic Fouonji made some big plays on the final drive but were ineffective otherwise. Of the tight ends, Eli Stowers had just one and Cole Spence had zero. Simply put, if Vanderbilt is going to compete in the SEC, it’s going to need one of these guys to step up as a playmaker.
The secondary had its shaky moments as well, letting Virginia Tech back into the game with two straight 75-plus yard touchdown drives at the beginning of the fourth quarter. Lea made the proper adjustments, and the defense ultimately clamped down and won the game, but that stretch was concerning — particularly the completely busted coverage that led to a wide-open 62-yard bomb from Drones to Ali Jennings. The Commodores had a cushion against the Hokies, but they likely won’t when SEC play begins.
Still, the positives are overwhelming in this one. Virginia Tech is legitimate this year. The Hokies are loaded with experience and continuity, and they’ll rebound from this loss to contend for a bowl game. Vanderbilt came out with an excellent game plan and executed it to a tee. Hats off to the coaching staff for their masterful approach, and props to the players for following through.
Yesterday served as a beacon of hope for Vanderbilt Football. I know many of Vanderbilt’s seniors — myself included — who have endured three years of less-than-ideal performances from the Commodores, are proud of what this team did.
Lea, who has never been afraid to be honest with the media, is right there with us.
“This is all very personal to me. I’m proud of the way this program has modeled resiliency, and I’m proud of our fight,” Lea said. “Not many players are tough enough to keep coming back into it.”
Vanderbilt will return to FirstBank Stadium and look to stay undefeated as it hosts Alcorn State on Saturday, Sept. 6 at 6:30 p.m. CDT.
