Once a multi year/multiple season tic holder, I drug my kids to Memorial when it would have been so much easier to leave them at home. After many years, many surgeries, and many seasons, I will be attending opening night once again with my 30 something children to sit in their season tickets seats. Most games I am in my chair communicating with them via text message. We didn't have cell phones my first year, but Eddie Fogler, Billy Mac, Lawson, Anglin, Elder, Ronnie Mc, led us to a SEC Championship & Sweet 16! I was HOOKED.
Hope to see a bunch of you there.
Anchor Down for Coach By as we build this thing back up.

I can use 1 to 4 but if you only have 1 Ill take it

Trying not to sit in the visitor sections. Edit - Now I am trying to find two for me and my daughter and also one for @OriginalChiDore

I will definitely pay face value.

I never thought I would type those words about needing tickets, but...

At Vandy. I don’t necessarily disagree in some ways, on the other hand it’s baffling. We’ve destroyed the spread in almost every game and Vegas has the nerve to say -3.5 at home. Then again - it’s their job to make money.

Would love to hear people’s thoughts on this. I don’t think the problem is Pavia at all. Auburn is a very good defense. But it is honestly miraculous he completed as many passes as he did. We’ve got to get him some easy throws. Sed on the other hand is not at all himself. Obviously they trust him the most. Time for some other guys to step up. I think we have to complete a couple deep balls. Safeties are too tight. We have to run legit play action. I would like to see us hand off on the jet sweep. If Sherrill is not the guy we need someone else. Johnson? We need to throw the ball in the flat to backs.

Any chance we see Cardenas, Brycen Coleman?

Kolbey Taylor has taken to Twitter and seems to be unhappy with his playing time. Did he play at all against Auburn on Saturday? Can’t imagine Lea will be happy about this.

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Seems he can’t get it done against top-25 teams. It will be interesting to see where he ends up next.

any guesses? im saying Lebron Hill/ Davin Chandler or Austin Howard(again)

“… I think our defense is playing at a really high level. Offensively, we’re not able to create explosive runs. It seems that we really struggle to protect the passer, and to throw and catch some. So , and we’re not playing very well on special teams. That’s a bad combination .”

“First drive of the third quarter I thought was great . …. We go right down, hopefully come away with points, but we don’t.”

“ I thought Vandy did a good job. They Played a lot of bear front and did a lot of different things that were going to take away some of the run game from us. I thought they tackled extremely well… Some of the credit goes to them. They’ve been very good against the run all year and were today for sure….”

Q. Was Jarquez banged up ? He only got 2 carries in the second half.
“ I don’t think he was banged up. He did look gassed to me. “
“In the second half, I can’t remember how many possession we had, but we didn’t have many. “

Q- On the leverage penalty on the field goal, what was the explanation from the official , and is that something you guys work on …?
“ I better be careful here . That certainly was a critical call in the game and one I strongly disagree with. On the line of scrimmage, you can put your hands on the back of the offensive lineman. You can’t land on them. I didn’t think we landed on them. I’ll have to watch the film and see. Y’all probably had a better view of it than I did, but it was certainly a critical call in the course of the game.”

I haven’t kept up with the SC QB. I know earlier in the season he was terrible, but they’ve kept up with him so how much has he improved? Is he in the Vandagriff/ Thorne tier or better? If the chicken’s offense struggles we have a good shot to muddy our way to a victory.

This has seemed like an ongoing point of conversation so I was curious and wanted to pull some statistical numbers to compare how we're performing this year compared to last year (through 304 games). From a statistical standpoint, it's hard to guage through 4 games as we don't know 1) if Vandy will fall off a cliff like they did after the UNLV game last year and 2) how good/bad teams like Ga St, Va Tech, and Mizzou are this year.

For the sake of this data pull, I removed the FCS games (Alabama st and Alcorn st), as frankly it would really inflate some numbers (which would benefit the defense), but I might pull those numbers if requested.

OFFENSE



This brings us to:



So what this tells us

• Statistically, the offense is actually performing worse through 2 FBS games compared to last year
• The big differences are:
  • Rushing yards/game have nearly doubled
  • Time of possession increased nearly 3 min/game
  • Turnovers and sacks allowed massively decreased

Overall, this ties into the ongoing narrative that the offense's goal is to take long and methodical drives, be very safe with the ball, cut down turnovers


DEFENSE



This brings us to:


So what this tells us

• Statistically, the defense is playing basically the same (statistically)
• The only slight differences are:
  • Sacks and TFL has slightly increased

Finally, I was curious about the quality of opponent YoY, because my assumption was this years' opponents to dat have been tougher. So I pulled the SP+ ratings from last year, and what we have to date this year:



So from this data,

• On average, we're playing teams ranked about 40 spots higher than last year
• Offense is slightly worse, but playing way better opponents. It should have been a reg flag earlier that our offense last year was having trouble scoring against said teams, but now we know)
• Defense stats are about the same, but playing teams that are way way better this year
• Damn that Georiga state game!

My conclusion (not surprisingly) is that both sides of the ball are better. The offense is doing what they are supposed to do: chew up clock, don't turn the ball over, and score when we can. The defense, while the stats looks similar to the prior year, are doing it against much better competition, which would indicate that it's a better defense.

FWIW, Vandy's final SP+ of 2023 was 110 and as of now (in 2024), we're ranked 69.



Just thought I'd share. I'll do my best to keep this up to date as the season progresses!

Happy college basketball season! The Mark Byington era starts tonight.

Vanderbilt is a 24.5-point favorite against Maryland Eastern Shore. UMES coach Cleo Hill Jr. will make his debut at the helm tonight, as well.

Vanderbilt doesn’t seem to know what he or his team will show them. It’s mostly made up of non-experienced D-I transfers and JUCO guys.

The size will be interesting to monitor. Maryland Eastern Shore doesn’t have anyone above 6-foot-9, but does have four guys 6-foot-8 or taller. Will be some pressure on Jaylen Carey to stay out of foul trouble.

Reminder that AJ Hoggard won’t play tonight so you’ll see plenty of Grant Huffman and Tyler Tanner.

This is the game thread. Brandon, Billy, Chris and I will all be there. We’ll have a ton of content out postgame.

Me, my boys, and my girl will be there. Im coming earlier to socialize and tailgate, where are the VSports guys going to be?

Looked like a potential concussion on that late touchdown. Should have been a targeting call.

1) That was one of the nicest and most polite fan bases I’ve ever witnessed. I had seven or eight Auburn fans stop us and compliment Vandy. Most you could tell enjoyed Vandy except for today obviously.

2) That win wasn’t a fluke but my god the football gods are smiling on VU right now.

3) The team became bowl eligible but they didn’t celebrate like it was a big huge deal. I liked that.

4) The Vandy sideline is one of the most errrr vocal sidelines I’ve ever heard. Communication is not a problem on that team. It got heated at times and lots of coaching going on. It was neat to see them in person.

Up to 25th in coaches poll.

Still awaiting AP poll release

The Tiger's defense was successful in greatly limiting Vandy's misdirection RPO offense yesterday.

Was it because of Auburn's DL, Pavia and Alexander being hobbled and a half step slow, or Auburn's defensive scheme? Was the play calling by Kill/Beck altered greatly because of injuries/limitations?

Very good game by Vandy in the way the special teams and defense played when the offense was less effective.

Vanderbilt ranked 25. How is SC not ranked after the Aggies blowout

who would have guessed our defense would completely shut down the rushing attack that put up over 300 yards against uk the week before ? and stymied their leading rusher to the tune of 50 yards, after watching him destroy uk for over 250 yards.
sure they got some yards thru the air, but I think vu’s mission first and foremost was to try to keep hunter from going off as he did in Lexington.
kudos again to CCL and the D which has not only played quite admirably, but actually carried the team on its shoulders at times thru these 6 wins.

Here's the link to our channel. Just so you're prepared, it'll be SEC-wide content rather than Vandy-specific but if you want a question answered, ask it in the chat and we'll try to get to it.