Martel Hight has already lived a strange little football life at Vanderbilt, and he seems to know exactly where he belongs now.
The cornerback spent 2025 trying to do too much at once - working on defense, taking receiver reps and handling punt returns - and the whole experiment eventually forced a reset. After Vanderbilt’s win over Georgia State, Hight went back and watched his 16 defensive snaps. The verdict was ugly.
He called it himself.
“I’m like ‘God, man, I need to hone back in on being a DB,’” Hight told Vandy on SI. “So, I came in and told my coach that I was all over the place and I needed to hone in on DB work again.”
That decision changed the shape of his season. Hight was still lining up at receiver and returning punts at that point, but the workload shifted quickly after the Georgia State game.
He played only 13 snaps at receiver the rest of the way and never topped five in a game there. More than 80% of his cornerback snaps came after he chose to stop splitting his attention and commit fully to defense.
The result showed up right away. Hight had only one game after Week 4 where he graded below a 50, and he put together three games above a 70. His best performance came against Kentucky, when he earned a 93.9 grade, a career high.
“We were trying to do a lot with him this time last year,” Lea said. ”We were playing him both ways, and I felt like his performance suffered as a corner. I think as we really honed in and had him focus on defense, you saw his play potential start to peak.”
Hight’s numbers across the season told the same story. He was the only player in FBS with more than 70 yards in interception returns, more than 50 receiving yards and more than 50 yards in kick returns. He also finished with four interceptions over the last eight games of the season, a sign that the cornerback version of Hight had settled back in.
That’s where Vanderbilt wanted him in the first place. He arrived as a cornerback, built his reputation as a cornerback and, in his own words, came to understand that the league may see him that way too.
“I think he sees me as having more potential of me being a corner in the league than a receiver, so in order for me to be at my best I need to practice more at DB,” Hight said. “I’ve definitely bought into it.
I miss receiver, love receiver. If my name’s called, I really want to go back, but being a corner and playing corner is a different mentality that you have to take towards the game and I’m all with it.”
Vanderbilt isn’t framing the three-way role as a mistake, but the program also isn’t pretending it unfolded exactly as planned. The staff entered 2025 thinking the cornerback room was relatively thin, and it turned out to be stronger than expected. Hight’s play at corner dipped more than anyone around the program wanted, even if no one is blaming him for it.
There were reasons for that, too. Richardson said a concussion Hight suffered in fall camp hurt him by taking him off the field and limiting his reps at both receiver and corner. Hight has never leaned on that as an excuse, but he’s also not shy about how important work time is.
“reps are gold,” he said.
Now he’s getting them. Hight is back on the turf every day, almost always at his natural position, and Richardson says this has been his best fall camp yet as he works on press coverage. If that carries over, Hight has a real chance to become Vanderbilt’s top corner.
Junior Sherrill thinks the leap is there.
“Most definitely,” Vanderbilt receiver Junior Sherrill told Vandy on SI in regard to the idea that Hight could take a significant leap as a result of only playing corner and returning punts. “He’s always up for the challenge.
He’s a guy that’s always going to be up for the call. If you call his name, he’s always gonna make the play.
I’ve been seeing how hard he’s been working, how much he really loves this stuff. So, it should be an amazing year.”
Hight, for his part, still has one more message before he moves on. He isn’t begging for receiver snaps the way he did a year ago, but he wants Diego Pavia and the staff to know he’s still available if they need him.
“Whenever he calls my name,” Hight said, “I’ll be right there in his hip pocket.”
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