NASHVILLE, Tenn. — The ending to Vanderbilt’s 2022 season could not have been more disappointing. Actually, it was worse than that, second-year head coach Clark Lea said Saturday night after a 56-0 defeat to No. 10 Tennessee.
“That was painful and I hurt for these guys because they put so much into this and that one got away from us,” he said.
Despite the sour ending to Team’s 2 journey, however, the Commodores made tremendous strides in their second season under the direction of Lea.
They snapped long losing streaks against conference opponents, Power Five opposition and in league games at home and on the road. They won at least five games for the first time since 2018. They finished one victory short of a postseason bowl game despite dropping five consecutive games at one point.
It was a season of remarkable growth and excitement, especially in the season’s final month.
“It’s inevitable that we will continue to improve this program no different than we have from Year 1 to Year 2,” Lea said. “If you look all the way back to when we first got here, we were in a tough place. It’s taken time to get us to this point where we finished 5-7 and had consecutive conference wins heading into our last game.
“When you look at our team we’re bigger, faster, stronger and you see there is this gradual closing of the gap that exists in our conference. We sense improvement. We see trajectory and we’re going to stay faithful in our process because the process is righteous. It doesn’t deliver us to where we want to be right now. We have to take ownership of that. This is where we are. We have to have the patience to stay committed to it and we’ll get to where we’re going.”
Vanderbilt can turn its full attention toward 2023 now that the dust has settled on the previous 12 games spanning three months. Those 12 games had some high point, some low points and some points to helping raise the expectations moving forward.
The Good
Vanderbilt couldn’t have asked for a better start to the 2022 season.
After a week on the island of Oahu, where the Commodores could have seized the opportunity to slack off and vacation, they routed Hawai’i 63-10 in one of the program’s best performances of all-time.
Vandy returned home to beat Elon 42-31 and then got a 38-28, come-from-behind victory at Northern Illinois on Sept. 17. That latter victory gave the team one more win than all of the 2021 campaign.
Vanderbilt’s two biggest triumphs in 2022 came in November. A last-minute touchdown pass in Lexington on Nov. 12 gave the Commodores a 24-21 victory at Kentucky and then, a week later, a 31-24 victory over Florida gave the Dores a fifth win of the season.
Those two wins against SEC opponents came on the heels of a five-game losing streak.
“If I could define this season, there’s two things that come to mind and I think of resiliency and perseverance,” Vanderbilt senior safety Maxwell Worship said. “You look at last season and we only won two games. Coming into this season a lot of people thought we weren’t going to be able to do what we did.
“We ended up having five wins and we surpassed a lot of people’s thoughts and opinions. Obviously other people’s opinions don’t matter. At the end of the day it’s about us. I just think that moving forward we have a lot to look forward to. The trajectory is high.”
The Bad
There are three Saturdays in 2022 where Vanderbilt can look back and realize just how far it has to go: Sept. 24, Oct. 15 and Nov. 26.
Vandy lost to Alabama, Georgia and Tennessee, respectively on those dates by a combined score of 166-3. Those teams finished the regular season a combined 32-4 and represented some of the best college football has to offer.
So those results indicate a barometer of where the Commodores are relative to competing for a division or conference championship.
“What you see is the best teams in this league don’t miss their opportunities,” Lea said Saturday about those results. “They capitalize and they make you pay. In the two (SEC) wins we had I felt like we had that as part of our identity. You felt like every time they exposed their ribs we landed a punch. (Against) Alabama, Georgia and Tennessee, we didn’t.”
The Reasons for Hope
One could argue Vanderbilt was a few plays away from finishing 7-5, maybe 8-4, possibly even 9-3.
After the 2-0 start, Vandy hosted Wake Forest on a soggy Saturday night at FirstBank Stadium and lost 45-25. The Dores fell behind 21-3 and 35-10 in that affair, had three turnovers and allowed 451 yards.
On Oct. 8, Vanderbilt led undefeated Ole Miss 20-10 in the second quarter and 20-17 at halftime. But Lea’s team was blitzed in the second half to the tune of 35 points in what turned out to be a 52-28 defeat.
Losses to Missouri (Oct. 22) and South Carolina (Nov. 5) by a combined 14 points after left Vandy feeling like it missed more golden opportunities for wins. The theme of beating itself and learning how to be victorious permeated through the Vandy locker room after those results
The Outlook
Vanderbilt’s three-win increase in victories from 2021 to 2022 was the program’s largest turnaround since going 2-10 in 2010 to 6-7 in 2011.
The goal of getting over the five-win mark and back into a postseason bowl game in 2023, however, will not be a cakewalk.
After hosting Hawai’i and Alabama A&M, Vanderbilt must play at Wake Forest (7-5) and at UNLV (5-7) in consecutive weeks before beginning SEC play in 2023. Divisional foes Florida (6-6), Georgia (12-0), Tennessee (10-2), Kentucky (7-5), Missouri (6-6) and Ole Miss (8-4) all remain on the slate while Auburn (5-7) will come to Nashville on Nov. 4.
Lea and staff will also have to find a way to navigate an offseason of student-athlete departures coupled with the arrival of dozens of new faces. Continuing to build depth will remain a focus for a roster still not at full capacity.
For now, the Commodores can take a breather and revisit what went wrong in 2022, what made for once-in-a-lifetime memories and how they can become the best team yet in the Clark Lea Era.
“It’s not as a matter of if Vanderbilt will be great, Worship said. “It’s a matter of when.”
— Chad Bishop covers Vanderbilt for VUCommodores.com.
Follow him @MrChadBishop.
