If you had told any college football fan what awaited Vanderbilt in 2024, they would’ve laughed you out of the room. Not just a chuckle and an “OK, guy.” Like, a belly laugh and maybe a tear or 2.
It wasn’t just the fact that the Alabama win happened. If Vandy had gone 1-11 with a win against the No. 1 program in America, that still would’ve been deemed a successful season in Nashville. But Vandy did that en route to the earliest bowl-berth clinching victory in program history. A 7-6 season concluded in fitting fashion, with Diego Pavia dominating in a bowl game performance that fueled the program’s first postseason victory of the Playoff era.
There were no shortage of positives for a Vanderbilt program that entered the 2024 season with its biggest national conversation being the future of Clark Lea. Heading into Year 5, much has changed, but with Pavia and Co. back for an encore, many of those positives are the same as they were in 2024.
There’s no better time to be positive than talkin’ season. That’s what I always say. Each of the next 16 days, we’ll look at the best things about each SEC team. This daily series will align with the SEC Network Takeover, which runs from Saturday, June 28 until July 13, AKA just before talkin’ season officially kicks off at SEC Media Days on July 14.
For those keeping track at home, that’s alphabetical order.
So far, here are the teams that we’ve done:
- Alabama
- Arkansas
- Auburn
- Florida
- Georgia
- Kentucky
- LSU
- Ole Miss
- Mississippi State
- Mizzou
- Oklahoma
- South Carolina
- Tennessee
- Texas
- Texas A&M
Today, we’ll close with the best things about Vanderbilt in 2025:
Best offensive player: Diego Pavia, QB (but we need to talk about Eli Stowers)
Simply put, Pavia was the truth. He was a revelation after transferring from New Mexico State as part of a migration with offensive coordinator Tim Beck, head coach Jerry Kill and Stowers, who’ll return as the best tight end in the sport and is perfectly worthy of being considered the best offensive player. My favorite Stowers stat is that on 3rd down, he had 15 catches (No. 5 in SEC) for 193 yards (No. 12 in SEC), both of which were more than Brock Bowers’ best 3rd-down numbers in an individual season (he maxed at 12 such catches for 127 yards). Am I saying that Stowers was as valuable as Bowers? Of course not, but that dude epitomized reliability and he’s a massive piece of Vandy’s 2025 outlook (he also had just 1 drop on 67 targets).
Pavia, however, is the straw that stirs the drink. He became the first quarterback to ever transfer from an FBS program to an SEC school and earn All-SEC honors immediately (Cam Newton and Jarrett Stidham had JUCO seasons in between their all-conference selections). Pavia’s best asset was and is his legs. Riley Leonard was the only Power Conference quarterback who had more rushing yards than Pavia (898), though it’s worth noting that the former got 3 extra games. Pavia led Power Conference quarterbacks with 49 missed tackles forced, and he led the way with 683 yards after contact even though he appeared to be dealing with a lower-body injury in the latter half of the regular season.
Nobody will argue that Pavia has a cannon for an arm, but he made smart decisions. Under pressure, Jaxson Dart was the only SEC player with a better NFL quarterback rating than Pavia (79.8), and Garrett Nussmeier was the only SEC quarterback with a better pressure-to-sack percentage than him (10.1%). Pavia also led the SEC with 9 touchdown passes under pressure while nobody else in the conference had more than 5. On his 45 throws that were 20 yards downfield, Pavia didn’t have a single turnover-worthy play, according to PFF.
Add it all up and you’ve got a guy who knows exactly who he is. That’s an ideal thing for Vandy.
Best defensive player: Langston Patterson, LB
It feels like Patterson has been at Vandy since the James Franklin era. While that’s not necessarily true — Langston’s older brother Kane spent 2 years with the program in 2022-23 after transferring from Clemson — it speaks to how important he’s been during a time when Vandy has lacked foundational pieces on defense. The younger Patterson racked up 152 tackles in his 2 seasons as a full-time player including a team-best 72 tackles as a sophomore in 2023. He dealt with a midseason injury last year, but still managed to fuel a major year-to-year improvement against the run (35 yards/game and 0.8 yards/carry better).
Patterson’s role as a captain on that defense will be pivotal as Lea transitions back to focus primarily on head coaching duties after he served as his own defensive coordinator in 2024. He and FAU transfer CJ Heard playing at an All-SEC level — Vandy is still searching for its first all-conference defensive player under Lea — would be a key development in proving that 2024 wasn’t a one-off season.
Best freshman: Carson Lawrence, S
It’s not often that Vandy lands a 4-star recruit from the state of Tennessee. The ball-hawking defensive back will have a chance to play immediately in a post-CJ Taylor world. The aforementioned Heard will occupy one of the safety positions in what could be the strength of that unit, but one would think that a decorated like recruit Lawrence has to be on the 2-deep from the jump with opportunities waiting in the 4-2-5. The best sign that Lea likes his secondary depth would be if corner Martel Hight became the first 2-way player during his tenure. That could bode well for Lawrence, too.
The early enrollee already put on 10 pounds during the offseason training program. He’ll likely need to continue to put weight onto his 6-2 frame in order for him to handle the physicality of playing that position in the SEC. But much like Taylor, Lawrence has the chance to step in and become a do-it-all, multi-year player in Lea’s defense.
Best game: Week 6, Vanderbilt at Alabama
Something about an ant and a sledgehammer … OK, we don’t need to revisit that again. We can instead just bring up how incredible this game was last year, and how Pavia doubled down on Bussin’ with the Boys and saying that he “has no doubt” that it’ll be the same outcome. Pavia does own the state of Alabama after what he did in consecutive seasons at Jordan-Hare Stadium. Shoot, he did that at New Mexico State and Vanderbilt. Who’s to say that Pavia doesn’t run the state of Alabama?
It’s a monumental game for Vandy, yes, but nobody can take away what 2024 meant. Throwing goalposts in the Cumberland River is an all-time celebration. Alabama fans might be ready to throw Kalen DeBoer in the closest body of water if he loses to Vandy in consecutive seasons. It’s going to be appointment viewing to see what Pavia and Co. have in store for the rematch in Tuscaloosa.
Best reason for improvement: The percentage of returning production number
Lost in the shuffle of every single “Vandy encore” conversation is Bill Connelly’s percentage of returning production stat, which has Lea’s squad at No. 2 in the SEC and No. 8 in FBS. That number isn’t created to show which teams will compete for a national championship. The main purpose is to show which teams should expect to progress, and which teams should expect to regress. It’s heavily weighted on returners with experience in the trenches — 13 of Vandy’s 20 transfers are offensive or defensive linemen— and it doesn’t hurt that a mobile starting quarterback like Pavia is back.
Does that mean Vandy should be bracing for an 8-4 season? That’s not realistic. But a 7-5 regular season isn’t as crazy as some might think, especially if Pavia stays healthy. The oddsmakers might disagree with that, as indicated by an over/under of 4.5 regular season wins (the over is -192 on FanDuel). But then again, Vandy stomped all over every prognosticator imaginable last year. What’s to say that can’t happen again?
Doubt Pavia and Co. at your own risk.
Connor O'Gara is the senior national columnist for Saturday Down South. He's a member of the Football Writers Association of America. After spending his entire life living in B1G country, he moved to the South in 2015.
