ATHENS, Ga. - Vanderbilt left Georgia with a clear message ringing louder than any moral-victory talk: the margin is tiny, and the Commodores can’t afford to waste it.
Clark Lea made sure that point landed after Saturday’s loss. He said he was frustrated with Vanderbilt’s second-half performance, then went a step further and said he was even more frustrated with the fourth quarter, when Georgia outscored the Commodores 10-0 and outgained them 159-19.
The game had been competitive early. By the end, Georgia had taken complete control.
“Our margin for error is so small and we as a team have not yet learned to play the game in a manner that gives us a chance on that field today,” Lea said. “There are just things that this team needs to do to close that gap in performance, that goes beyond anything we're going to do in adding players to the roster as we go to next season.
Our [focus is] growing players within our roster. Our focus right now is just cleaning up the football, and we believe that when we do that, that that outcome can be different.”
That’s the reality Vanderbilt is staring at now. The Commodores are 3-2, and the schedule doesn’t offer much breathing room.
In some metrics, they have the most difficult remaining strength of schedule in the country. All but one team left on the slate is ranked in the AP Top 25 and will be favored against Vanderbilt.
Lea had already hinted at this last week after the Auburn loss, when he pointed to special teams mistakes and said Vanderbilt couldn’t keep making errors like that. He didn’t spell out the whole picture then, but the message was there: the gap to the top of the SEC is still real.
Vanderbilt has an inexperienced quarterback on the field at all times. It lost plenty from last year’s 10-win team.
And with this schedule, the line between progress and a rebuilding year gets awfully thin.
Still, the Commodores aren’t calling it rebuilding.
Lea said after the game that there was “no joy” in the locker room, and Vanderbilt isn’t treating the first-half fight with Georgia as some kind of consolation prize. The team doesn’t seem crushed by two straight losses, but it also isn’t celebrating the fact that it hung around early.
“We felt like we let that get away,” Vanderbilt receiver Junior Sherrill said. “We felt like we were supposed to win that game, and we fell short. So obviously, we were disappointed in the way we played and the loss, I mean, the result of the game, but we got to come back Sunday and Sunday and Monday and during the week and just get better.”
Sherrill said this group carries a different mindset than the 2023 Vanderbilt team that lost 37-20 to Georgia at FirstBank Stadium. In his view, the mentality is better now, but the standard inside the program is higher too. This is a team that believes it has more talent than that group did, and it knows it still has to prove it.
The details are hard to ignore. Vanderbilt has to clean up the penalties.
It has to give its quarterback more help with a stronger run game. It has to stop giving away points on special teams.
And it has to turn all that talk about growth into something visible on the field.
“There's no room for slip ups,” Vanderbilt safety CJ Heard said. “You got to figure out how to win small margins, man.
It's gonna be key for us. I mean, in all three phases, so we're gonna do it.
We're gonna keep practicing, keep getting better, it's gonna happen.”
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Ace Glass arrives at Vanderbilt with the kind of rsum that makes a new backcourt worth watching from the jump. The 6-foot-3 guard was productive enough as a freshman at Washington State to set the schools single-season freshman scoring record with 525 points, and he did it while showing he can score efficiently, create for others and live comfortably around the three-point line.
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Vanderbilt May Have Finally Found The Receiver Junior Sherrill Needed
In Vanderbilts 38-14 loss to No. 2 Georgia, Junior Sherrill kept giving the offense something to build on, finishing with seven catches for 107 yards and a touchdown. The more interesting development, though, may have been the emergence of JaCory Thomas, the Old Dominion transfer who had two receptions for 43 yards and looked more involved in the passing game than he had earlier this season.
Head coach Clark Lea pointed to Thomas increased activity as a positive sign, and it is easy to see why the Commodores would want that to stick. If Thomas can settle in as a consistent vertical threat, it could give Vanderbilt a needed complement to Sherrill and a little more balance to an offense that is still searching for reliable answers. [Read more 🡒]