Nashville, TENN--You probably know Vanderbilt quarterback Drew Dickey's skillset and what his time is dedicated to in this season of his life.

You probably don't really know Drew Dickey, though.

"I think it’s easy for people to know me as a football player, obviously this is where most of my time goes and I do want to be great at football and I do want to be the starting quarterback and I want to win games," Dickey said. "It’s easy for people to think that; that’s just Drew Dickey, he’s a quarterback at Vanderbilt."

Dickey is fine with that being a title of his. That's not his primary one, though.

Perhaps if it was, he'd be complaining about his lack of snaps through two seasons at Vanderbilt or he'd be constantly struggling to find answers as to why he hasn't seen the field.

Instead the Austin, Texas, native takes it all as a reminder.

"It’s been hard so far in my career I haven’t necessarily reached all the things that I’ve wanted to reach and I’m still striving every day," Dickey said. "Truly it’s just a reminder that nothing in this world can sustain me."

Dickey has carried over that reminder to his relationships. The Vanderbilt quarterback wants his name to be synonymous with something bigger than it.

"Nothing, whether it’s sports or even relationships, nothing in this world can sustain you but the love and the blood of Jesus Christ and I want everybody who knows me to know that and I want everybody. I would want them to know that Jesus Christ is the way, the truth and the life."

Vanderbilt head coach Clark Lea has taken notice of that.

"So strong in his faith," Lea said of Dickey unprompted. "He leads through that."

Dickey reflected that quality years ago as Vanderbilt tight end Cole Spence walked into the pair's dorm room. Spence's dad Randy recalls seeing a Bible on Dickey's desk, which would become significant in Spence's testimony.

To help Spence through his wrestling, Dickey had to do some of his own a year before.

The Texas native realized through his studying that at points in his past he hadn't had the mindfulness present to move forward in the way he has.

"I was doing some research on this thing called moralistic therapeutic deism," Dickey said. "There’s a lot of Christianity in America that’s kinda like this feel-good gospel that really what God wants you to do is be a good person and if you think you’re a good person and a moral person you can kinda like earn your way to Heaven and when I read stuff like that it actually resonated with me a lot.

"[I thought] ‘maybe my understanding of God is less about my relationship with him and that he wants my heart and more of ‘I need to outweigh my bad with my good and be a good person and when I get to the end of my life hopefully the good outweighs the bad and I’ll get to Heaven that way.'"

That jarred the 18-year old Dickey, who changed his thinking from there.

"Reading that and figuring that out was pretty unsettling because I figured I could actually have thought I was a Christian my whole life and maybe I never actually knew Jesus."

From there Dickey no longer viewed himself as a three-star quarterback or walked only with a mindset towards recruitment or actions.

The quarterback took to heart what he found in his research.

"That became my true identity"

Dickey plans to carry that identity to the field in 2024 as he continues to compete for the starting quarterback role that he's been after since he arrived on campus years ago.

"I’m excited for him to continue to scratch and claw to get that on the field experience he’s been looking for," Lea said. "I think he hasn’t had the on-field success yet that he aspires to but he’s so consistent in his work ethic and the way he communicates and taking responsibility for his actions, his behaviors that the team respects him. Ultimately I can’t say enough about him as a leader and a member of our team."