As Vanderbilt took its second bye week of the 2023 season in which it finished 2-10, head coach Clark Lea took notice of a score.

What Lea witnessed would go down as one of the biggest upsets of the college football season. That wouldn't be the last he saw of that result, though.

New Mexico State did something that night that Lea wants for himself. The Aggies went into Jordan Hare Stadium and won decisively against Auburn.

"When I saw the score I was like 'God, that’s it. That’s what we want to be.'”

Lea wanted to see the more than the score from that night. He wanted to see whether this was for real.

The Vanderbilt coach quickly found his answer.

"I started to study that game and all three phases I was just watching from snap one to the finish and I probably watched it 10 times, honestly," Lea said on the Vandysports podcast. "What stood out to me watching the game was first of all it wasn’t like Auburn beat themselves. It wasn’t like they just had a bad day. This was a New Mexico State team that was not the better team on the field, or I should say the most talented team. [It] was the better team in the way they executed, the belief they played with and how hard they played."

Lea also took notice of the way they were coached.

"Their systems were sound, solid and simple. It wasn’t overly complex. It wasn’t gimmicky. But, they had answers."

Little did Lea know that eventually he'd have that coaching staff largely working under him just a few months later. The Vanderbilt coach knew he wanted to get something out of this endeavor, though.

"Auburn was motioning on the first play of the game and it’s like New Mexico is motioning before them," Lea said. "I was looking at that and at the time thinking ‘I’m gonna take the staff to Las Cruces to spend time and to just connect with these guys and to really dig in on what they’ve done.'"

It didn't work out that way, though. Things changed quickly for Vanderbilt.

“This was a really hard year for me,” Lea said. "As the season moved on for us I realized that there was gonna need to be some staff changes for us because I’m not interested in doing anything other than what I believe is the best for winning performance at Vanderbilt.”

The 2-10 season that Vanderbilt had forced Lea’s hand in regards to how he approached things. Continuity was no longer the name of the game. Lea needed to evolve.

As the Vanderbilt coach went through that process, what he saw during Vanderbilt's bye week kept coming back to him. Particularly with New Mexico State's offense and who was running it.

"I went back to that film just to look at it again and was just fascinated with Tim Beck."

Lea continued his search to find his offensive coordinator but just kept coming back to Beck.

"I had a set of qualitative metrics that I was working off of when I made the decision on the offensive coordinator position where I felt like this is what success would look like at Vanderbilt," Lea said. "There were a few candidates I was working through but as I put Tim’s performance through those numbers he was really well regarded in all those analytical aspects."

Throughout that search, Lea kept coming back to Beck and eventually hired the 60-year old offensive coordinator. That age marked a change in the general age demographic of Lea's young-leaning staff.

It wouldn't be the last change in the program, though.

From there Lea would continue to take New Mexico State seriously. The fourth-year head coach hired away what was Beck's replacement in Las Cruces in Ghaali Muhammad-Lankford, he hired safeties coach Melvin Rice away from the Aggies, he signed quarterbacks Diego Pavia and Blaze Berlowitz.

That's not to mention tight end Eli Stowers as well as running backs Jamoni Jones and Makhylin Young.

Perhaps most importantly, Lea hired away former head coach Jerry Kill to be his Chief Consultant and Senior Offensive Advisor.

That's not a move that Lea would've expected before his investigation of Beck.

"When I called Tim to see if he'd be interested in interviewing for our offensive coordinator job it was the first indicator that I got that Jerry may be considering retiring," Lea said. "When we went out there and met together and I came away really impressed with Tim I got to spend some time with Jerry.

"He wanted to get through his season out of respect for his team and he wanted to give them everything he had but I knew he was interested in the possibility of being a part of this."

Lea didn't just need Kill to be a part of it. After a season like he'd just had he needed a foundational change in the form of an advisor.

"Our mission is his mission," Lea said of Kill. "Our mission is his mission. This is what he longs to do is come to a place like Vanderbilt that has all these great foundational aspects but we're not set up all the way yet.

"He's got a great ability to have an impact here with a young head coach that's just desperate to find that level of sustained success."

Lea's desperation to get to that level of success caused him to redefine how he executed his vision and who he did it with.

As the fourth-year head coach enters perhaps his most crucial season yet, he'll do it betting on replicating what happened in Jordan Hare Stadium that night and what was built in Las Cruces.