The first glimpse of Vanderbilt’s offense without Diego Pavia, while enlightening, wasn’t conclusive.
At times, the Commodores looked like they did with Pavia in 2024, when they tried to hold the ball forever and run it and chew up possession time. Other times, they looked more like 2025, when Pavia started to throw it all over the field.
It made for a fitful 28-9 victory Sept. 5 over Austin Peay, these multiple offensive personalities. Wasn’t an accident, though. It tends to happen when a team plays multiple quarterbacks.
“I’m not going to sit here and tell you it’s the same offense,” Vanderbilt coach Clark Lea said. “You saw a little more tempo with Jared (Curtis) and a little more kind of spread out and let him sling it a little bit. With Blaze
(Berlowitz), we looked a little more like we traditionally look.”
Right now, Vanderbilt’s biggest problem as it inches closer to the beefy part of a challenging schedule is that it does not have a quarterback.
It has two quarterbacks. And as the saying goes, if you have two quarterbacks, you do not have one.
Lea wouldn't commit to a timeline on settling on one quarterback other than to say, "There's going to come a point in time where it's kind of anti-strategic to play two." I'd argue that point has already arrived.
Vanderbilt’s coaches need to decide on a quarterback. It’s time. We are past an entire offseason and preseason, and now, the real season has started without any clarity on the competition between Berlowitz and Curtis.
Yeah, I know Berlowitz started against Austin Peay and played more than Curtis. But the fact that Curtis, as anticipated, appeared before halftime of a close game — when Berlowitz hadn’t done a thing to get benched — tells you that this remains a very open competition. And that suggests to me, deep down, that Vandy's coaches still want Curtis to seize the job without it just being handed to him.
Patience for that was fine in April and May and June and July. Even in early August. But it is September, and an SEC team in 2026 needs a quarterback before it starts hooking up with SEC teams.
If Vanderbilt’s staff, by punting the decision into the season, was hoping it’d get made for them on the field against Austin Peay — well, it didn’t.
There wasn’t any clear separation. Berlowitz was 11-for-16 passing for 149 yards, and he ran for 45 yards. Curtis was 7-for-9 for 60 yards, and he ran for 22 yards. Both played fine. Neither made egregious mistakes. Berlowitz was more successful leading the offense to scores. Curtis had impressive moments. Same as it has been in practices.
Vandy’s fans have their favorite, clearly. Hearty cheers greeted Curtis’ entrances in each half. While that wasn’t fair to Berlowitz, it made sense.
The offense with Berlowitz reflected where Vanderbilt has been. Curtis offers the chance to go places Vanderbilt hasn’t been offensively.
And that's where this argument can be settled. Curtis has more upside. He presents more danger to defenses because of his arm talent (and underrated running ability). He didn’t exactly light it up in his debut, but he didn’t look overmatched, either. On his first play, he fired a strike for a 17-yard completion near the sideline.
The tricky part to all of this is that Berlowitz hasn’t done anything to cost himself the job. It has never been a knock on him to believe that he’s being eclipsed by factors beyond his control in a competition against a five-star freshman who just got to campus. Just as it wasn’t a knock on George MacIntyre at Tennessee for a similar circumstance in his preseason competition with Faizon Brandon.
But Josh Heupel’s Vols were bold enough to do what the Commodores haven’t yet.
The Vols made a choice. They picked Brandon. Maybe it’ll be the right choice. Maybe it won’t. But they rolled the dice, and that has allowed Tennessee’s entire program to move forward. Brandon will get the opportunity to learn and grow and begin to reach his potential, knowing that his coaches have confidence in him.
The longer the Commodores wait on the seemingly inevitable with Curtis, the more it’ll just hinder his growth and the hopes for a Vanderbilt offense that has the horses to be much more explosive than the unit showed by scoring only two TDs against Austin Peay.
What must be done eventually needs to be done soon.
It should be Curtis. The longer we wait for that reality, the longer it’ll take Vanderbilt to rediscover an offensive identity that is missing without Pavia.
Reach Tennessean sports columnist Gentry Estes at gestes@tennessean.com and hang out with him on Bluesky @gentryestes.bsky.social
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: For the sake of Vanderbilt's season, it's time to let Jared Curtis cook | Estes
