Vanderbilt football goes into the open week needing a reset to save its season.
The Commodores (3-5, 0-5 SEC) have lost five straight games and missed their chances at an SEC win. The best remaining shot is likely their next game, on Nov. 7 at Mississippi State.
The 34-17 loss at Kentucky on Oct. 24 was the latest blow, with quarterback Jared Curtis committing two turnovers. The Commodores have committed the second-most turnovers of any SEC team, behind only Oklahoma. They also have continued to be the most penalized team in the conference, committing nearly nine penalties per game.
As the open week commences, here are three areas of importance for Vanderbilt:
Jared Curtis' decision-making
Curtis has started to come into his own with his passing, with an expanded playbook showing
against Kentucky. He has excellent accuracy on deep balls; against Kentucky, he also began to throw more over the middle.
The problem is the turnovers. In particular, Curtis has thrown back-breaking interceptions late in three games where Vanderbilt was attempting to stage a comeback. It won one of those games (against NC State) but interceptions all but ended comeback attempts against Arkansas and Kentucky.
Build on the play-calling against Kentucky
Prior to the turnovers against Kentucky, the play-calling was highly successful. It looked more like the 2025 offense, with plenty of explosiveness and good efficiency.
Coach Clark Lea has said for weeks that the staff is still figuring out how to best build the offense around Curtis. What the staff did against Kentucky worked well, and the staff should build on it.
Figure out the future of the defense
Lea said after the Oct. 10 loss to Ole Miss that he did not plan to take over the defensive play-calling or make a change in play callers.
Lea has called the defense himself before; he did it during the 2024 season. But he decided the team would be better off with a devoted defensive coordinator, so he hired Steve Gregory in that role.
Lea needs to decide whether he intends to keep Gregory going forward. If he doesn't, the firing doesn't necessarily need to happen during the off week if calling the defense himself (or appointing someone else on staff to) would be too much of a hassle, but if he intends to make a change, he should figure out what he wants out of a defensive coordinator and start looking at potential targets.
It's a tough line to walk for a defensive-minded head coach because although Gregory calls the plays, the base defense is Lea's, and so he cannot assign blame fully to Gregory for the defensive struggles.
Aria Gerson covers Vanderbilt athletics for The Tennessean. Contact her at agerson@gannett.com or on X @aria_gerson.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Vanderbilt football must address these three areas during off week
