'It's About Us,' Why Vanderbilt Isn't Worried About New-Look Charleston Southern Offense

Nashville—Charleston Southern coach Gabe Giardina says he has a few tricks up his sleeve, but he’s not ready to reveal them yet. 

What Giardina isn’t secretive about is the reality that what his team did in 2024 wasn’t up to snuff. It wasn’t even close. After a week two upset win over Furman, Charleston Southern went on to lose its last 10 games of the season and lost five games by five points or less. Bluntly stated, they "weren't scoring enough points” and “had to do some things different” as a result. 

“We weren’t very good at kicking field goals last year, we turned the ball over at a rate that you just can’t do it at and expect to win and really had a lot of early turnovers in games,” Giardina told Vandy on SI. “That kind of tilted the deal to make you change what you’re doing, play from behind a lot. We’ve just talked a lot this camp about giving ourselves the right to win.” 

Giardina isn’t naive enough to think that Vanderbilt coach Clark Lea wouldn’t eventually catch wind of something telling that he said in the preseason. He’s not going to give away a competitive advantage, but he’s okay with articulating his vision. 

That vision is centered on sophomore quarterback Zolten Osbourne, who Charleston Southern believes is the most important player on the field. As a result, Giardina brought in former South Carolina quarterback Seth Strickland to be his offensive coordinator and is working to implement a more “pro style” offense than he’s had in the past. 

In a similar way to the way Virginia Tech had to learn to expect the unexpected from the Vanderbilt offense prior to last season’s opener, Vanderbilt is having to head into Saturday knowing that it will see some things that it hasn’t before. 

“The first game is always tricky,” Vanderbilt defensive end Khordae Sydnor said, “Because you’re going to see things that you’ve never seen before. The offensive coordinator came from Anderson so he’s going to have things that we’ve never seen. So we’ve just got to attack it. If we play our technique and it’s about us, we’ll be fine.” 

Vanderbilt enters Saturday’s season opener as a 36.5-point favorite and is focused on ramping up its production at this stage. It knows it’s going to make mistakes–particularly as a result of a foreign scheme on the other sideline–but it hopes those mistakes are made at full speed rather than as a result of a lack of effort. 

Lea has done all he can to evaluate the schemes and personnel that his team may face–particularly wide receiver Chris Rhone, who Sydnor says is a “very good receiver” and runs 22 miles per hour–but at some point this has to become a game that’s up to his team rather than its opponent. 

“The first game is always going to be more about you than the opponent,” Lea said. “The game comes down to your mistakes, your understanding, your execution and how you play. Elite defense is 50% what you play and 50% how you play and we need to make sure both of those things are on display Saturday as we get a feel for how they’re going to attack and what the elements of the offense that are new, what the elements that they’re carrying over are.” 

While Vanderbilt figures that out, it’s going to have to stick to the principles that Lea has harped on over and over throughout the years. 

Don’t forget fundamental tackling. Don’t forget the run wall. Don’t forget the long, hard way is better in this context. Every Vanderbilt player is going to have to have those things in mind whether Bryan Longwell and Issa Ouattara–both of which have injury situations that put their Saturday statuses up in the air–are out there or not. 

They better be ready to change course if need be, too. 

“You’re going to need to be ready to adjust and adapt,” Lea said. “So much of early in this game is going to be keeping the ball inside, in front of us, capping our stakes, forcing them to go the long, hard way.” 

If Vanderbilt does that, this thing could be wrapped up promptly. 

“They want to get out in space,” Sydnor said. “We got to make sure we cap the shots and stuff like that, but it’s about us. We do what we have to do, we can shut them [down] quick.”