Vanderbilt Football head coach Clark Lea addressed the media for his weekly press conference on Tuesday afternoon. After falling to the Alabama Crimson Tide 30-14 two weeks ago, the Commodores are coming off a bye and will now return to conference action by hosting No. 10 LSU this weekend. Lea said he is happy with how his team approached the bye week and feels they are prepared and excited for the challenge that lies ahead of them.
“I thought we had an energetic bye week and [have] a team that is excited for the challenge ahead on Saturday,” Lea said. “This is a great SEC matchup and a great opportunity for us to compete and play in front of our home crowd.”
LSU will make the trip to West End with a 5-1 (2-1 SEC) record, with its only loss to now-No. 4 Ole Miss. The Tigers lead the historic record between the teams, 25-7-1, most recently defeating the Commodores 24-17 in Death Valley last year.
Their biggest asset this season has been their defense. The Tigers’ defensive unit is allowing just 11.3 points per game and has limited opponents to a combined eight total touchdowns. Junior linebacker Whit Weeks is third in the SEC in tackles per game (7.7) while Dashawn Spears is fourth in the conference in interceptions (4).
“[LSU’s] defense is elite,” Lea said. “But the way we have success is not worrying too much about them. It’s [focusing instead] on our process, our system [and] execution, because we believe in our offense. We think we have things inherent in our system and processes that will challenge them too.”
The Tigers’ offense is led by senior quarterback and captain Garrett Nussmeier. The Lake Charles, Louisiana, native has accumulated 1,413 passing yards and 9 touchdowns with a completion percentage of 66.2 this season. Last year for LSU, he amassed over 4,000 passing yards but decided to forgo the draft and return to Baton Rouge — one of just four quarterbacks in SEC history to do so after a 4,000-yard season.
“[Nussmeier] is really good and I thought that he played really well against us a year ago,” Lea said. “We have him at 20 miles per hour on our GPS. I mean he’s athletic. If you have open lanes in your pass rush, he’s going to find ways through and can hurt you running, too. But his skill set is getting the ball off quickly.”
Lea is confident, though, that his defense is properly equipped to handle Nussmeier. Lea wants to make him uncomfortable in the pocket by getting hands up and in the path of the ball while also crushing the pocket to speed up his decision-making.
“There will be opportunities for us in determined pass downs to create a little push and that’s been a focus of our defensive line,” Lea said. “We need to try to make space hard to come by for him.”
To add to LSU’s offensive threat is a myriad of offensive tools, including very solid tight end, wide receiver and running back groups. Standouts thus far in the season have been Caden Durham (283 yards on 67 carries) and Aaron Anderson, who averages 13.3 yards per reception.
“This is going to be two methodical offenses and so possessions are going to be hard to come by,” Lea said. “We need to fight those possessions with our defense [and] get the ball back to our offense so that we can get into a rhythm and hopefully have success in that way.”
For Lea, this comes down to executing what he refers to as “game control offense,” where his team is focused on winning the time of possession battle and finishing drives with touchdowns. This is complemented by a focus on point limitation defense that is particularly focused on getting the ball back in the hands of the offense.
“I think when all three phases are firing at the level that we are capable of, that’s where we’ve been able to get up a couple of scores and put games away late,” Lea said. “That becomes representative of how dangerous this team can be when we’re playing a certain way.”
With his team being back in their home stadium for the first time in conference play, Lea said he hopes that the fan base will continue to show up for this team, especially in key matchups like this one.
“We don’t want to allow the environment to impact how we play, but we hope to inspire people to show up for us in the way we play,” Lea said. “When you can compete in front of your home crowd and when we’ve won big games in our stadium, it has been fun to celebrate with our students, our band, our fans and community — all of that is meaningful to us.”
The support in the past two years for the program has been a change from the early years of the Lea era, where the crowds were sparse for conference games, especially in the later minutes.
“We’ve had these games in the past where, you know, it feels like a road game here at home,” Lea said. “[So], I hope our fan base is ready to show up and cheer loudly for the team. If it’s not that way, we don’t allow that to affect us; we’ve got a chip on our shoulder no matter what. But [we] hope the Nashville [and] Vanderbilt communities see the efforts the team’s putting in to make them proud and reciprocates by showing up.”
No. 18 Vanderbilt Football will host No. 10 LSU on Oct. 18 at 11 a.m. CDT. The game is set to be aired on ABC.
