Oh, what a difference a year of coaching experience in the SEC can make.

Vanderbilt coach Derek Mason took accountability for last year’s 3-9 record and the unstable football program that accompanied it while on stage at the 2015 SEC Media Days on Monday.

His opening remarks began with a simple admission: “I’m a year older, a year wiser, and I’ve grown up a little bit.”

He continued the contrite tone with a message to “Commodore Nation,” asking for fans to continue to believe in his vision for the program.

“I know it’s disappointing, the season we had a year ago,” he said.  “But that’s a comma. It’s a comma, okay, and not a period. This football team has definitely done the things that we need to do in order to get ourselves back on track and be exactly what we want to be.”

It was a much different tone than the one he used in his media days debut in 2014, when he was eager to talk about the brand of football he would bring to the conference that could elevate the Commodores to the top of the SEC East.

“My expectation is to push the envelope a little bit,” Mason said at SEC Media Days in 2014. “We have to move past the idea of playing for nine wins.  Nine wins, it’s really exceptional.  At the end of the day why have nine when you can have ten.  Why settle for ten when you can have 11?”

As it turned out, Vanderbilt fans would be left wishing for the days of nine-win seasons under James Franklin after an 0-8 performance in SEC play from the Commodores.

This year, Mason was reflective about how his first season as a head coach after two decades as an assistant went awry.

“I made some assumptions a year ago about this football team,” Mason said. “I assumed that, just because we were in the SEC, that we’d play like an SEC team, and we didn’t. Again, that starts with me. So I bring it back to me.”

“For me, I’ve got to be more persistent, more consistent with my personality, and that personality really layers down to our football team. I control every facet of what we do, top to bottom. With that being the case, this football team has done a great job day in and day out of not disappointing. So I don’t want to disappoint them. They don’t want to disappoint me. Growth is key in this game, and I feel like I’ve grown a lot.”

Mason gave explanation of his decision to fire both his offensive and defensive coordinators after the season, saying it was period of reflection after a 51-0 loss to Mississippi State in November that left him certain that changes needed to be made to build the program that he had envisioned when he took the job. He also talked about why he chose to take over the defensive coordinator role instead of hiring a new one.

“I believe I know defensive football,” Mason said. “So with that being the case, late in the year as we moved through the season and I looked at our production, I felt like defensively we weren’t the type of football team that I foresaw coming into Vanderbilt. I pictured us being aggressive, attacking style defense that looked to stop the run and really apply pressure to quarterbacks…

“After talking to coaches and interviewing guys, I felt like I didn’t want to speak through anybody to talk about what the structure of our defense was going to be. It needed to be direct, and if I’m going to be responsible, then I’ll be responsible.”

When speaking to expectations for his second season, he was careful not to throw out any predictions that he could not make good on this year.

“We’re going to be a better football team,” he said. “What that is, I can’t predict wins. But I do know, in terms of being competitive, doing the right things, and creating men that will thrive here in the SEC, I can do that. So I’m not going to be about predictions. I’m just going to be about the work and let the season tell a story.”