Vanderbilt’s salty defense is another test for Aggies
COLLEGE STATION — Texas A&M is down to three games this season, including a bowl contest, and needs at least two victories to improve on its 8-5 finish of last season.
The Aggies (7-3, 3-3 SEC) begin that mission on Saturday night on the road against an opponent that’s feeling pretty good about itself of late, as Vanderbilt is coming off a 21-17 home victory over Kentucky.
That win was a step in the right direction for the Commodores, who’ve had a rough early go of it under second-year coach Derek Mason, but it was the week before that had most Southeastern Conference observers buzzing.
Vanderbilt and its surprisingly salty defense fell at No. 8 Florida 9-7 on Nov. 7, a wake-up call to the rest of the league the Commodores (4-6, 2-4) aren’t quite the pushover they’d been in finishing 3-9 last season.
“They make it hard to score,” A&M coach Kevin Sumlin said. “They’re going to hold people to field goals, control the clock and play good defense. That’s been their formula.”
Vanderbilt’s worst loss this season, in fact, came at nonconference opponent Houston on Halloween, 34-0. That speed bump en route to what the Commodore hope ends up in a bowl game was sandwiched between a 10-3 home victory over Missouri and the narrow loss at Florida.
“We have to continue making sure we exhaust everything there is in this football team pushing forward,” said Mason, 7-15 in his two seasons in Nashville. “November is when the real teams show up. You can’t be a pretender. Pretenders fade. People who are relevant stay relevant.”
The Commodores need victories over the Aggies and at Tennessee to make a bowl for the
first time since then-coach James Franklin’s last season of 2013. They finished 9-4 two years ago, with a 41-24 victory over Houston in the BBVA Compass Bowl in Birmingham, Ala.
Penn State hired Franklin, and Vanderbilt hired Mason following a short but successful stint as Stanford’s defensive coordinator under coach David Shaw. Mason fired his defensive coordinator, David Kotulski, at the end of last season, and said he’d call the defense this season. So far it’s been a plan that’s worked for the Commodores – at least defensively.
Vanderbilt ranks fourth in the SEC in scoring defense and fifth in the league in total defense, while leading the league in thirddown conversions allowed and red zone defense, unexpected statistics considering the Commodores’ losing record. The primary explanation for 4-6? Vanderbilt is 13th in both scoring offense and total offense.
“We just have the mentality in the red zone (inside the 20-yard line) that the other team is not going to get into the end zone,” safety Oren Burks said of the Commodores being solid on at least one side of the ball. “That’s our ultimate goal, and everyone sticks to it.”
The other “ultimate goal” is to push Vanderbilt back into a bowl game to follow up a 3-9 season.
“We deserve to go to a bowl game this year,” senior linebacker Darreon Herring said. “That’s everybody’s mentality: Get the seniors to a bowl game.”
The Aggies, who defeated Vanderbilt 56-24 two years ago at Kyle Field behind then-quarterback Johnny Manziel, have never played in Nashville, Tenn. It’s a night game honoring the seniors for Vanderbilt, with temperatures expected in the 30s.
“We’ve got a challenge ahead of us,” said Sumlin, whose program closes out its regular season at SEC West rival LSU on Nov. 28. “It’ll be an emotional night (at Vanderbilt), but it’ll be emotional for us, too. Because we want to get (win) No. 8 as bad as anybody.”