It wasn't supposed to be like this for Vanderbilt head coach Clark Lea and his team.

A year that started with hope of the program's next step has tailed off into a five-game losing streak that has taken a toll on Lea and his group.

"I've got a team that's beat up mentally physically and emotionally right now," Lea said after the Commodores' loss to Florida.“It’s not easy, especially with a team that has a lot of pride and a lot of expectation to themselves."

Those expectations originally included a season that would lead the Commodores to a bowl game. Seven games in, the Commodores are all but out of that conversation. Lea admits that a sentence like that comes with some pain, so does Vanderbilt's loss to Florida.

The third-year head coach doesn't want that to define his team, though.

"I understand and I experience the feeling of pain, it’s hard to completely understand all that goes into these game weeks, the pain is a part of the process, the process of growth," Lea said. “We’re just falling short of our internal expectations right now and that’s hard but the vision hasn’t shifted and me personally I look at these painful moments as a part of the journey and the journey is righteous, the process is righteous.”

Lea wants to take ownership of his team's poor results but thinks moments like Saturday night's loss could make his team better.

"Ownership is an important aspect of this and that ownership starts with me but we aren’t gonna be victimized by these results, we’re gonna set our jaws, it’s painful but we’re gonna move forward and allow us to evolve into a better team.”

Vanderbilt captain Ethan Barr echoed a similar message.

“We play this game to win, we don’t play to lose so I think at times it can be really tough," the veteran linebacker said. "Once the game’s over you gotta learn and understand that you’ve gotta move on, you’ve gotta figure out how to be better and stay together as a team. I think we do really well at that."

Lea doesn't just see that as blind hope. The third-year head coach points back to the two biggest wins of his Vanderbilt tenure as reasons for optimism that his philosophy can pay dividends this season.

"What’s more important (than pain) to me and where that gap exists is to say ‘there’s still so much that we can do to play better football’ rather than being victimized by the feeling we have or the emotion of not winning or being in a tough stretch," Lea said. "This program needs to feel the emotion and channel it into action."

"That’s what we did a year ago, we didn’t deviate from who we were and didn’t suddenly change courses. We stayed the course, we stayed steady, we held fast, we stayed true and we experienced breakthrough because of that."

Vanderbilt quarterback Ken Seals also preaches that message homestretch of his final college season.

“Yeah it is, but that’s not something we’re gonna back down from, it is what it is and we’re gonna own it," Seals said when asked if it was hard to keep morale up during a five-game losing streak. "

"We’ve got another game coming up at home so that’s where our attention is gonna be, it’s not gonna be on those last five games," Seals added. "Those games come and they go and you move on past them and you take the learning and you apply it to the next week and so I think that’s gonna be big for us and ultimately put this behind us and keep moving forward because we’ve got another half of a season to play so we gotta finish strong."