A Hidden Identity: Why Vanderbilt Football Feels as if its Pulse Can be Determined by Perimeter Blocking

Nashville–The day before Vanderbilt started its 2025 fall camp, Clark Lea stepped up to the front of Vanderbilt’s team room on the second floor of McGugin Center and played a cut up of clips that he needed everyone to pay attention to. 

Lea could’ve pulled out a few clips of touchdown passes or sacks to instill confidence in the group that sat in front of him, but instead he chose to highlight a few plays that his group likely hasn’t seen on tape much. 

As Lea clicked play, his team saw examples of his 2023 group and how plays were destructed based off of their lack of effort on the perimeter. They also saw what happened when Lea’s 2024 group embraced their responsibility on the perimeter and moved guys out of the way to open up the way for Vanderbilt’s running backs to pick up big gains. 

“The point was that ‘a receiver comes here to catch the ball. Well, there’s one ball. But, there’s a way for me to impact every play that I’m in the game and that means I understand every part of my role and blocking on the perimeter is part of the edge we want to have as a team,’” Lea said. “When you talk about getting a run game going, getting Diego going in the quarterback run game or option, it’s going to come down to our ability to put our face on people and sustain blocks.”

A Vanderbilt football player has likely heard it from Lea a million times; if Vanderbilt is going to win, it has to win in the margins. It has to do the little things better than anyone else in its conference does. If it doesn’t, what happened in that 2-10 season in 2023 will happen again in 2025. 

As a result, Vanderbilt’s receivers have to know that their job is going to be different than most other receivers’ jobs. Vanderbilt’s run-heavy offense won’t give them the targets that some others would, but that doesn’t diminish their responsibility. 

“As much as we want to catch touchdowns and celebrate,” Vanderbilt two-way player Martel Hight said, “We’ve got to block. We’ve got to run to win and we can’t just depend on passing so [Lea] has talked to us a lot about it and that’s kind of an identity in the receiver room.” 

Lea has found that players like Hight reciting his message on the importance of blocking and going out and doing it doesn’t just help his run game. When Vanderbilt as a team has an attitude of selfishness, you can see it in its receiver room before anywhere else. When it’s attacking secondary players and opening up holes, that’s generally a sign that his group is about the right things. 

If that’s the case, then it’s far more likely to win. 

“When those guys are committed to playing down in and down out a certain way, the rest of the team follows,” Lea said Thursday. “When those guys are consumed with their touches, their catches, what they’re getting out of it and you see them stop and quit on plays that they’re not involved in, I think that also sets an attitude and captures a subculture within your team. You don’t have to look far to see that room functioning in a selfish way.”

Perhaps Lea’s example of Vanderbilt’s contrasting 2023 seasons and 2024 seasons is a directly-applicable one of his philosophy on the level of a team’s downfield blocking indicating the level of its buy in. 

Too often around Vanderbilt’s program, perimeter blocking has been optional. Perhaps consequently, it’s had far too many avoidable losses over the years. If it’s going to win in 2025 like it thinks it can, it knows that passing off responsibilities like opening up a hole on the perimeter will prevent it from reaching its goals. 

“It could be perceived as going extra and beyond, but for our team it’s just a part of the job,” Vanderbilt tight end Cole Spence told Vandy on SI. “If you’re out on the field and you don’t have the ball, it’s an expectation that you’re blocking. Even if I’m running a route and not catching the ball, our expectation is to turn and get a block.” 

In Vanderbilt’s 2023 season in which it went 2-10, there was a tangible subculture of selfishness starting at the top of its wide receiver room. In games like its eventual 2023 loss to Florida, its blocking eventually caught up to it. 

In 2024 its blocking was exemplified as quarterback Diego Pavia threw an ill-advised block at the head of a reverse play in Vanderbilt’s eventual bowl win over Georgia Tech. Perhaps Pavia was told off after putting his body on the line, but his desire to put his head on someone and clear a lane for Vanderbilt receiver Quincy Skinner was an indicator of where Vanderbilt’s desire to win was as a whole.  

Lea isn’t scared whatsoever to admit how drastic the difference in mentality is. Backing away from that reality would be far too diplomatic. 

“That receiver room is one I think took some major strides a year ago in terms of their attack and their mentality,” Lea said. “When you look at the difference between how we played in ‘23 and how we played in ‘24, I think a lot of that was representative of how our receivers played in big moments with big catches but also blocking on the perimeter.”

Lea says that Skinner and former Vanderbilt receiver Loic Fouonji as well as current Vanderbilt receiver Junior Sherrill said “enough” with Vanderbilt’s poor effort on the perimeter  heading into the 2024 season and that former Vanderbilt receiver Jordan Matthews has also harped on that message while he’s in the building. 

For that group–two of which are pursuing NFL careers this summer–improvement isn’t only associated with individual reception and yardage numbers. Improvement comes with greater offensive production as a whole. 

“Just being a complete receiver,” Sherrill said. “Back in the day it was special teams, getting me the ball in space. Now it’s just being a complete receiver, whether it’s blocking, going downfield for routes. Overall that’s where I feel like I’ve been improving.”

Sherrill’s improvement as a blocker is his least noticeable improvement this fall–in which he’s appeared to be more of a downfield threat–but it could open up noticeable improvement for Vanderbilt’s ballcarriers in the fall. 

For the junior receiver–who says he wants to be a leader–it could also be an area in which he’s responsible for setting the tone for Vanderbilt’s freshman and sophomore wide receivers. If his emphasis turns into results, it could mean a step forward for the Vanderbilt offense as a whole.

“It’s important, it’s going to be a key to our success this fall,” Lea said. “We’ll continue to focus on it and the spirit of that is ‘what within your role do you love to do? What within your role is hard?’ And for everyone in our organization, we don’t just get to do the things that we want to do. We have to do the things that the mission asks of us at the highest possible level. That’s one example of that and how it manifests on the field.”