Vanderbilt suffered a heartbreaking loss to Georgia State in Atlanta, and here are some thoughts on that.
There are no excuses.
We all know the difficulties of winning at Vanderbilt, but try this one on for size: Georgia State, a Group of 5 program, lost coach Shawn Elliott in mid-February because Elliott left to become an assistant at South Carolina. That gave Georgia State about two weeks before it hired Dell McGee, who’d coached one game (a Georgia Southern bowl win in 2015) in his career. That’s tough under any circumstance, much less the current transfer portal era.
Take nothing away from Georgia State, it had talent and athleticism. If you didn’t know which of the two teams you watched was an Southeastern Conference program and which wasn’t, you might have guessed the wrong one.
And that’s the point: As hard as it is at Vanderbilt, it had a big running start on the Panthers and still blew it.
That’s bad enough, but the "how" made it even worse.
Giving up the game-winning touchdown in seven plays over 59 seconds to a team that had to pull one out of the fire to beat Chattanooga last week was bad, and brought back memories of how Vanderbilt lost to South Carolina in 2021. The worst part, though, was how Vanderbilt’s got in this spot, and that was the mistakes that allowed it to fall behind until the very end. It started with a blind-side sack that forced a fumble and gave Georgia State its first three points.
And that was bad, but that’s also football and those things happen. But here are two things that should never happen:
- Steven Sannienola, not Vanderbilt’s normal kick returner, taking an uncontested safety for fumbling the ball out of the end zone, scooping it back in and taking a knee. I feel bad for Sannienola, who immediately knew he made a mistake and felt the weight of it. Either you’re prepared for the moment or you’re not and if you’re not, someone else should be out there.
- There were nine penalties for 85 yards, including four in the fourth quarter. If it’s a one-off thing, okay, but this year that’s not been the case. Vanderbilt can never let issues with intelligent play be an issue week after week and that’s one of the hardest things to swallow exiting the night.
The offensive line wasn’t good.
Vanderbilt allowed two sacks and a sack-adjusted 3.9 yards per rush on 32 carries. Pavia (taking out sacks) ran for 55 yards, making him the leading rusher. Vanderbilt’s best two tailbacks (Sedrick Alexander and AJ Newberry) ran 14 times for 56 yards. Not terrible, but not what an SEC team should be doing in a game like this.
Maybe my mind would change upon a re-watch, but my takeaway was this: Vanderbilt’s rushing yards seemed to come mostly out of deception and unpredictability via Pavia’s creativity. And sure, there were moments, like the runs Alexander and Newberry had in the final minutes to get the lead, but the line wasn’t opening gaping holes with any consistency.
The Commodores were poor at the line of scrimmage the last I-don’t-know-how-many years, and certainly hitting the portal helped. But tonight showed there’s still a ways to go.
The two biggest positives of the night were Pavia and Eli Stowers.
You’ve got to hand it to Pavia. There were whispers about his heath all week and then some of those fears confirmed when Pavia looked gimpy in warm-ups. He threw for 270 yards and rushed for 40 more and accounted for three touchdowns, and if the defense gets a stop then he’s the topic of this piece and talk shows all week.
The guy’s a winner even if the scoreboard said differently. Pavia’s rapport with Stowers appears to be growing, which is no surprise given their history. Stowers caught nine balls for 110 yards and a score, a twisting, tackle-breaking 17-yarder in the first half that provided one of the few glimpses of hope in a mostly-poor first period.
