Vanderbilt Football Won Big, But Played Imperfectly. Here’s How

NASHVILLE, Tenn. – Vanderbilt football head coach Clark Lea was pleased with his team’s performance as he stood coaching the Commodores to a 45-3 win over Charleston Southern. Well…he was mostly pleased.

There was one thing from Saturday night in particular that bothered Lea: penalties.

Vanderbilt finished the game with seven penalties for 60 yards compared to five Charleston Southern penalties for 54 yards. For a team that averaged 5.3 penalties per game last season, which was the second-lowest in the SEC, the discipline was not up to the standard Lea wants his team to have.

One that really bothered Lea occurred right before halftime. With under a minute to go before the break, the Commodores had a drive that started on their own 16-yard line, but marched into plus territory with 20 seconds to go. On a broken play where wide receiver Richie Hoskins found himself all alone on the 10-yard line, Pavia evaded a sack and threw a dart to Hoskins, who ran into the end zone to make it 34-0.

While Hoskins celebrated with the rest of the offense in the end zone, the officials called a holding penalty on Vanderbilt that resulted in the touchdown being called back and the Commodores had to settle for a 28-0 halftime lead. Then in the third quarter, another holding penalty took away a Sedrick Alexander rushing touchdown.

“We had penalties that accrued and some of them, just sloppy play, some of them operational. Some of that, we've talked about,” Lea said. “You know, that's part of the first game. But also, if you go back a year ago, it cost us early on, it took us cleaning those penalties up to find success. So we can excuse it as part of the first game and part of learning how to play, but we cannot hang on to that. We have got to move forward and to play cleaner.”

Penalties were a little bit of an issue throughout training camp. Jerry Kill did get on the team about pre-snap penalties and offensive penalties in practice. But there is no reason to panic. It is just the first game of the season, where typically sloppy plays and lack of discipline are more of an expectation. Vanderbilt was able to fix its penalty issues it had to start the season in 2024 and with an experienced roster, it is fully capable of doing so again.

Fortunately for Vanderbilt, its penalties did not come back to hurt itself and made Saturday night more of a learning opportunity.

“Obviously, we want a touchdown, but to back up twice with holding penalties is just shooting yourself in the foot. So, I'm really frustrated about that, but we’ll coach it and fix it and move forward from them."

However, Vanderbilt needs to clean the penalties up sooner than later, and Lea will certainly do what he can to make sure touchdowns do not get called back next week. The Commodores go on the road to Virginia Tech next week in what will be a revenge game for the Hokies. 

: