NASHVILLE - Marlen Sewell didn’t just show up at Vanderbilt’s opener on Saturday night. He owned the sideline like someone who had earned the right to be there.
The now-Chicago Bears safety spent the pregame hours greeting familiar faces, pausing between handshakes only long enough to watch his former teammates go through warmups before Vanderbilt’s first game that he had missed since 2021. Sewell lingered with Diego Pavia, Chase Mitchell, Khordae Sydnor and Isaia Glass, the group of former Commodores who were all part of Vanderbilt’s 2025 run to a program-record 10 wins.
That part of the scene mattered. But Sewell’s place in it mattered more.
Unlike those former teammates, Sewell stayed in Nashville for his entire college career. He could have left when the program was going through rough years and he wasn’t seeing much playing time. Instead, he stayed through a loss to ETSU and through multiple 2-10 seasons, betting on the place and on the version of himself it would eventually help create.
“I always call myself a Vandy legend,” Sewell told Vandy on SI. “This is home.
I’ve even got a place out here. If all else fails-other than Birmingham, Alabama-Nashville, Tennessee is where I want to be, Vandy in particular.
I built a life here.”
That kind of label won’t land as a universal truth, but it does fit the role Sewell played in Vanderbilt’s rise. He wasn’t the flashiest defender on the roster, and he wasn’t the headline star. What he was, though, was dependable - a starting-level piece and a culture-setter on a defense that helped push the program from the bottom toward College Football Playoff contention.
Sewell’s legacy at Vanderbilt goes well beyond the numbers attached to his career: 101 tackles, three passes defended and 0.5 sacks. He was a captain twice, and by his own estimate he still knows 95% of the people around the program.
The exceptions, he said, are the non-early enrollee freshmen and transfers. Before kickoff, he was hugging Vanderbilt security guards, coaches, freshman linebacker Austin Howard and receiver Kayleb Barnett.
For Sewell, that’s the real reward for sticking it out. He may not be around the program often this season because of his work with the Bears’ practice squad, but he clearly takes pride in showing up for the people and place that shaped him.
“It’s so important to come back and see these guys play,” Sewell said. “It fills my heart with joy to be out here and watch them.”
The feeling apparently runs both ways. On Aug. 29, when the Bears played the Tennessee Titans in their final preseason game, Vanderbilt safeties coach Melvin Rice, edge rusher Miles Capers and safety Jalen Gilbert were in the stands to watch Sewell.
He responded with three tackles that night before the Bears cut him hours later. Chicago brought him back almost immediately on the practice squad, and Ryan Poles’ front office clearly still sees something worth keeping close.
That connection fits Sewell’s path. His route to the NFL was not smooth.
He went undrafted, signed with the Kansas City Chiefs and was cut after Rookie Minicamp. He chose Kansas City over Chicago at first, but the Bears came back around, and Sewell still believes the same thing about himself that they do: he can become the kind of player teams regret letting slip away.
“I’m always gonna have that chip on my shoulder,” Sewell said. “That’s just always how I’ve been, ever since being a kid.
It was a great [training] camp, but there was always going to be more left on the table, and I'm going to just keep improving and do whatever the Bears need me to do to help the team, whether that be a role player, scout team player. Whatever I got to do, I’ll do it.”
He also sees something bigger in what Vanderbilt gave him. Sewell said before the 2025 season that he committed to the program under Derek Mason because he wanted the experience to shape him into a man. Standing on the sideline Saturday night, surrounded by the people who knew him when he was still becoming that version of himself, he looked like someone who believes he got exactly that.
“It was one of the greatest moments of my life,” Sewell said. “I left it better than how I found it.”
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