When it comes to the world of sports, there are very few things with the same level of excitement as a primetime game in September.
The crispness that accompanies the nighttime air. The sunsets over the stadium during pregame ceremonies. The bright lights that illuminate the field once the sun has fully set. The list goes on.
Nighttime fall games, no matter the sport, just have a different vibe about them. That said, there’s one other factor that needs to be considered — the energy surrounding the team itself. For a primetime game to reach its intended output, the team hosting it has to be successful.
Needless to say, since 2018, Vanderbilt hasn’t been successful.
In fairness, it’s hard to curate and nurture said vibe when dealing with all that the Commodores have dealt with since then. A pandemic, a coaching change and a major facelift to their football stadium and surrounding facilities haven’t exactly screamed “perfect autumn night.”
In last week’s brunch, I wrote about how Vanderbilt had seemingly turned the corner. It straight-up outplayed Virginia Tech en route to its most impactful win since head coach Clark Lea took over in 2021. Then again, its tough to know how much weight to give a game like that. On one hand, Vanderbilt nabbed a quality win over a Power Four team that many expected to contend for the ACC Championship and a spot in the College Football Playoff. On the other hand, who knows how good the Hokies actually are? It is Vanderbilt, after all.
As I walked through the droves of fans tailgating at Vandyville on my way to the press box last night, the aforementioned vibe — the one with the crisp air and beautiful sunsets — was there. And that’s when I knew. Last weekend was no fluke, and the Commodores are here to stay.
Watching a classic Nashville sunset over a packed house at FirstBank Stadium as Vanderbilt played host to Alcorn State, I could just tell that this team was different. This team is real.
Vanderbilt was the vastly superior team against the Braves. While that might feel like stating the obvious, when it comes to past endeavors between Lea and FCS schools, that’s not always been the case. Start with Lea’s first game as Vanderbilt’s leader: a horrifying 23-3 home loss to ETSU. Fast forward a year to 2022, when Vanderbilt needed a record-breaking six touchdowns from Mike Wright to beat Elon 42-31. Even last season, against Alabama A&M — the ‘Dores may have won 47-13, but the box score didn’t tell any of the story. Vanderbilt was sluggish from the start and led by only nine points halfway through the third quarter.
Last night was entirely different. Vanderbilt was way better than Alcorn State. It was 55 points better.
Sausage, Egg and Cheesing
Sausage, Egg and Cheese. SEC. My go-to breakfast choice as a child. Also, and perhaps more appropriate in this context, the premier conference in college football. Vanderbilt has never had it easy when it comes to the competition it faces. Critics often overlook the fact that Vanderbilt has an undergraduate population of right around 7,000: Every other school in the Southeastern Conference has more than double Vanderbilt’s enrollment. Combine that with the university’s academic standards, and voila! You have a sports program that’s fundamentally disadvantaged when compared to its conference peers.
To say that’s the reason Vanderbilt has struggled in the past would be a cop-out. There are certainly other factors — like poor coaching and facility-related deficiencies — that have played a role. Still, though, the fact remains that Vanderbilt’s potential pool of recruits is shrunk not only by its small campus but by its academic prestige as well. And that’s not even considering the on-campus fan base that pales in comparison to the other 15 SEC schools.
In my four years covering SEC Football, one thing has always stuck out to me: the cupcake games that teams like Alabama, Georgia, etc. schedule. The low-end FBS and FCS schools that help teams refine their skills in preparation for the real challenge of conference play. Surprising to perhaps nobody, the blue bloods of college football always obliterate their inferior opponents.
Vanderbilt, for a slew of reasons (not withholding those listed above), hasn’t done this in the past. Not only has it failed to defeat high-level competition, but its struggled to flex its muscles against low-level foes.
Now it’s done both. It got a signature, resumé-building win against Virginia Tech in Week One. Next, the Commodores went out and put the hurt on Alcorn State in Week Two, the way any good SEC team should. The 55-0 thrashing of the Braves was not just an impressive win — it was the conference’s best win of the week. No other SEC team outscored its opponent by 55 points in Week Two, and only three Power Four teams (Boston College, Ohio State and Indiana) won by more than Vanderbilt.
Last night marked Vanderbilt’s largest margin of victory since 2012 when it beat Presbyterian 58-0.
“We wanna prove ourselves. A lot of people were surprised to see the way this team played last week, and we don’t want to give up that spotlight,” Lea said after the win. “There’s a mentality there that is fueling us.”
The Commodores still have a lot to prove, but they showed that they mean business with their complete and utter dominance of the Braves.
Acorns
I can’t tell you the amount of people that I’ve heard refer to the Braves as “Acorn State” in the week leading up to this game. It’s a relatively unknown school in the middle of Mississippi, so it isn’t surprising that nobody really knows how to pronounce its name. Add that to the fact that Vanderbilt’s unofficial campus mascot is a squirrel, and this was really a can’t-miss opportunity as far as titling goes.
The Braves looked a lot more like Acorns than anything else last night. I said above that one of the tenets of an SEC squad is beating inferior competition. Another is being physically imposing, and two weeks into the season, Vanderbilt seems to have this as well. In past years, the Commodores haven’t looked the SEC part athletically: they were smaller, slower, weaker, etc.
All offseason, strength and conditioning coach Robert Stiner was lauded for the work he put in in the weight room with Vanderbilt’s athletes. Lea took the podium at SEC Media Days and claimed that many of the team’s position groups had put on an average weight of 10 pounds while maintaining — or adding — speed. Watching the Commodores fly around on the field against Alcorn State, it became clear that these claims are reality.
Vanderbilt swarmed the line of scrimmage on defense all game. The Braves could do nothing on offense, producing just 71 total yards. 28 rushing attempts gave way to a meager 40 yards as it seemed like the Commodores gravitated to the ball for open field tackles with speed and technical excellence. Interceptions from CJ Taylor and Taco Wright — the latter went for a touchdown — highlighted a dominant defensive performance from Lea’s resurgent group. Alcorn State didn’t even cross midfield in this one.
On the other side of the line of scrimmage, nobody could tackle Vanderbilt’s ball carriers. Diego Pavia, Sedrick Alexander, AJ Newberry and Nate Johnson all ran for 50-plus yards. Whether through high-end speed or methodical, physical rushing (or both), Vanderbilt’s runners did whatever they wanted all game. No matter how hard Alcorn State tried, the deficit in size and strength was insurmountable. Nothing better displays this than the fact that the football operations group ran out of fireworks in the fourth quarter. When was the last time that happened at Vanderbilt?
To put it poetically, Alcorn State was the acorn to Vanderbilt’s squirrel. Be it on offense or on defense, Vanderbilt chewed them up and spit them right back out.
Specials
On Live from West End last week, our staff talked about what a luxury it is for a team to have such a competent special teams unit.
That isn’t to say there haven’t been standout players within the group’s ranks over the past couple of years (see former All-American Matt Hayball), but this group is unequivocally different. Vanderbilt has legitimate playmakers across the board.
Start at kicker, with sophomore Brock Taylor. Sure, he might’ve missed a potentially game-winning field goal last weekend against the Hokies, but he also made a 53-yarder in that game and connected on another 46-yarder Saturday. His inexperience may have gotten the better of him early on, but make no mistake, Taylor is far and away the best Vanderbilt kicker since Lea took over the program. He has the leg to make 60-yarders and will only become more accurate as the season goes on.
Moving to punter, Hayball’s replacement, Jesse Mirco, had some tough shoes to fill coming into this season. Thus far, he’s lived up to expectations. The Ohio State graduate transfer — also from Australia — has been excellent for the Commodores already. His best punt came in Week One when he pinned Virginia Tech inside the three-yard line, but he played well this weekend, too — his two punts went for an average of 55.5 yards.
What really stole the show against Alcorn State was the return unit led by sophomore cornerback Martel Hight. He looked ready to pop a return all night — setting Vanderbilt up in excellent field position thanks to 34 and 28-yard returns in the first half. But it was until the second half that he made his real mark on the game. Hight used his next-level speed to find a gap in the defense on a 57-yard house call. He and Lea both sang high praise of the rest of the punt-return unit, who did an excellent job of creating space for Hight to turn on the afterburners and find paydirt.
Having a good special teams unit provides such an edge to teams looking to get over the hump. What happens when its a close game and Mirco flips the field to give the Commodores’ defense a short field to work with? How about when Taylor nails a 50-yarder when previous iterations of Vanderbilt would’ve been forced to punt? Or when Hight or Junior Sherrill put Vanderbilt into prime field position after making a man or two miss on a return?
Now that Vanderbilt is playing at a higher level, it has to recognize the importance of winning in the margins. This group is capable of helping the Commodores do just that.
Vanderbilt Football will take its brunch to go next week as it hits the road to take on Georgia State in Atlanta at 6:00 p.m. CDT on Sept. 14.
