For a short time, it seemed as though Vanderbilt Football had turned a corner. A thrilling upset over Virginia Tech and a dominant win over Alcorn State through the first two weeks of the college football season had the Black and Gold riding high.
Then, it all came crashing down.
The 2-0 Commodores hit the road this weekend, traveling to Atlanta for a nighttime duel with Georgia State. On paper, Vanderbilt had everything going for it — momentum, talent, experience, consistency and more — and this season’s version of the Panthers is nothing like their teams of the past — they lost their head coach, starting quarterback, starting running back and star wide receiver. There was no reason for a red-hot Vanderbilt team, favored by 8.5 points, to lose this game.
I guess that’s why they call it a trap game.
Even with all of the losses it incurred, Georgia State is a reputable program. Head coach Clark Lea knew that, and he expressed concerns about this game during his press conference on Tuesday.
“The mentality coming into the building this morning was not where it needed to be,” Lea said after the game. “We got some work to do. Georgia State’s a proud program that’s had four winning seasons in the last five.”
Lea’s anxieties manifested into realities this weekend. Vanderbilt played a — and this is putting it generously — sloppy 60 minutes of football en route to a 36-32 loss at the hands of the Panthers. This game was unwatchable, from the objectively terrible ESPN+ stream to the Commodores’ on-field output.
There’s no getting around it: Vanderbilt was outplayed, outhustled and outcoached in this game. Georgia State simply wanted it more.
“I don’t think we deserved to win [this game],” Lea said postgame. “We played a really poor game tonight.”
Banana Peels
This one works on a multitude of levels, but let’s start with the most direct, color-coordinated comparison: flags. Vanderbilt committed nine penalties on Saturday night, culminating in a whopping 85 free yards for Georgia State. Vanderbilt’s lack of discipline might have been hidden away thanks to the big “W” next to Virginia Tech and Alcorn State, but this isn’t new. Against the Hokies, Vanderbilt committed six penalties for 65 yards. Against the Braves, there were 9 infractions for 90 yards.
On the road, with the margin for error so much smaller, mistakes like these can not be overlooked.
Take Vanderbilt’s third drive, for example. It should’ve ended with a Sedrick Alexander touchdown scamper along the left sideline, but an unnecessary holding call wiped the score out and pushed Vanderbilt back ten yards, forcing it to settle for a field goal.
On the very next drive, Vanderbilt’s defense forced a key stop on third down to force a Georgia State punt. The only caveat? Linus Zunk put a late hit on the quarterback and was flagged for roughing the passer. With a fresh set of downs, quarterback Christian Veilleux went to work and found Ted Hurst for a 33-yard touchdown four plays later.
Two drives and two penalties. It doesn’t seem like much at first, but in reality, these two sequences led to an 11-point swing. What could have been a 7-3 Vanderbilt lead ended up 10-3 Georgia State. 60 minutes might feel long, but it really much time. When all’s said and done, the game really boils down to a handful of key plays.
The Commodores were also forced to play the entirety of the fourth quarter without their star safety CJ Taylor after he was ejected due to a targeting penalty. The infraction turned a 16-yard gain into a 31-yarder, and the Panthers cashed in later that drive with a touchdown. As if losing Taylor against Georgia State wasn’t bad enough, the Black and Gold will be without their defensive captain for the first half of next week’s bout with Missouri.
Vanderbilt didn’t just commit terrible penalties, though. It slipped on banana peels all over the field as well. It’s not remotely uncharacteristic for Lea’s Commodores to shoot themselves in the foot and make the game that much more difficult on themselves, but Saturday was a new low.
On one of the strangest plays of the entire college football season, Steven Sannieniola muffed a kickoff, allowing the ball to roll out of the end zone before grabbing it and taking a knee, resulting in a safety. Vanderbilt not only gave the Panthers a free two points but the ball right back.
Vanderbilt will almost always operate in a talent deficit compared to its SEC counterparts. At the very least, it should be disciplined and play clean football. We’re now four years into Lea’s tenure, and it feels like nothing has changed on that front.
Everything’s burnt
It was like a nightmarish scene out of Hell’s Kitchen on Saturday night as Vanderbilt’s defense got burnt, play after play, to the tune of 36 points and 426 yards allowed.
Vanderbilt’s defensive output on Saturday night was simply inexcusable. Not having edge rushers Khordae Sydnor and Zaylin Wood and cornerbacks Marlon Jones Jr. and Mark Davis (who are both out for the season) was always going to make things a little murky for Lea’s unit, but last night was still an overwhelming failure.
Lea took over the defensive playcalling duties after demoting Nick Howell (who ultimately left) at the end of last season. Watching the Panthers’ offense go to work, you’d have no idea that Howell is gone.
The Commodores couldn’t stop anything that Georgia State did on offense, be it through the air or on the ground. The Panthers’ offensive line dominated the trenches as Freddie Brock, Jordan Ford and the rest of Georgia State’s rushing attack gashed Vanderbilt for 157 rushing yards and a touchdown. The front seven rallied for some key stops at the end of the game, but it was chunk play after chunk play for the Panthers’ ground attack. The performance was a far cry from the defensive front that the Commodore faithful had seen in weeks one and two, as Vanderbilt allowed only 115 rushing yards in both games combined.
The Panthers didn’t just run the ball all over Lea’s group, though; they threw it, too. Again, it was a question of the trenches. Vanderbilt’s inability to generate pressure through much of the game gave Veilleux all the time he needed to pick apart a weakened secondary. The junior signal-caller threw for 269 yards and 3 touchdowns as the Commodores’ defensive line forced only three quarterback pressures and got home for just one sack.
Not all of it falls on the players, though. There were a number of defensive packages that Lea and his defensive coaching group drew up that were destined to fail. There is no better play to showcase the questionable formations that Vanderbilt lined up in on Saturday than the final defensive play of the game.
Kolbey Taylor — clearly rusty after missing last week’s game against Alcorn State — struggled for much of the clash with Georgia State. After Vanderbilt crawled back from the depths of despair and took its first lead of the game, its defense allowed Veilleux and Co. to march down the field. With 20 seconds remaining and the Panthers on the 25-yard line, Taylor lined up in single press coverage with Hurst, who already had 6 catches for 103 yards and a score. Head coach Dell McGee made Lea pay for that mistake as Veilleux fired a strike into his star receiver’s hands to put his team up for good and hand the Commodores their first loss of 2024.
There’s no better play that highlights how poor Vanderbilt’s defense was.
Rocky Road
For a team that doesn’t get much of a home-field advantage — see Commodore Brunch Week 1 — Vanderbilt does not perform well on the road. Since Lea took over in 2021, the Commodores have won four total road games, losing 13, and it has been 673 days since the last of those against Kentucky in November of 2022.
However, the strangest part of the loss was the lack of hostility in Center Parc Stadium: a good portion of the stadium was empty, and save for a few pockets of proud Georgia State students, crowd noise wasn’t a factor. Vanderbilt didn’t have to deal with the boisterous SEC fanbases that it will be tasked with overcoming in the ensuing weeks.
Perhaps Vanderbilt’s road game preparation is not where it needs to be because it looked lost from the opening minute of Saturday night. Maybe the act of leaving the Vanderbilt bubble and staying in an unfamiliar city is what puts Vanderbilt on edge. (Diego Pavia fumbled on the game’s opening drive — which was already disastrous and would’ve ended in a punt if not for the turnover —- and gave the Panthers all of the momentum at the 13:40 mark of the first quarter.)
The Black and Gold ran into a similar problem last year in Week Four when they dropped a road game 40-37 at the hands of UNLV. Vanderbilt entered the game as the betting favorite, but the Rebels’ offense could not be stopped as it passed for 276 yards and ran for another 127.
Regardless of what caused this lack of readiness, the fact remains that Lea was outclassed in this one — McGee beat him at his own game. The Commodores had done such an excellent job in their previous two games of controlling possession time and running more plays than their opponents, but that wasn’t the case last night.
It’s hard to pinpoint exactly what’s wrong with Vanderbilt when it comes to road games against (theoretically) inferior teams, but there’s something there. Whether that “something” falls on the administration, the coaches or the players remains to be seen, but questions will be answered as the season progresses. The Panthers won the possession battle (32:38 to 27:22) and ran more plays (75-67). Vanderbilt got away from exactly what was working for it through the first two weeks, and it paid for it.
Granted, it wasn’t all bad. Tight end Eli Stowers had the best game of his career with 9 catches for 110 yards and a touchdown. The New Mexico State transfer has seemingly rekindled his flame with Pavia, as the two were firing on all cylinders through the entire second half. AJ Newberry looked solid again with 67 total yards, a touchdown, and a key two-point conversion. It’s not uncommon for a team’s stats to get inflated when making a comeback effort, but the ‘Dores offense did come alive in the final 32 minutes of the game with 29 points and 282 yards over that stretch.
Vanderbilt won’t be given the same leniency when it takes on a much bigger threat in No. 6 Missouri next weekend. Crowd noise will certainly be a factor at Faurot Field, as the Tiger faithful will be loud and proud on Sept. 21 when they welcome in a stumbling group of Commodores.
