Clark Lea, Vanderbilt's head coach, tells McElroy & Cubelic where the strengths of his team will be in 2024 & what the addition of Jerry Kill means to the program
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This Chalks94.5 podcast is brought to you by Millennium Satellite and Video. Log on to MSPNOW.com. TV excellence everywhere. That's Millennium. McElroy and Kubelik in the morning starts now. It's wild. Good to see you, Coach. Do you want to put the headset on and go? Hop on, bud. Let's do it. I can't keep up with the schedules now. I feel like with adding two teams, I feel like they've added 17 coaches. It's been hard to keep up, so...

Glad we won't get shut out this week. We got Coach Lee. No. Coach, how you doing today? We'll get the volume going here.

Am I right here? Yeah, there it is. Absolutely. I'm doing so well. How are you feeling? You look great. Have you guys been here since like four in the morning running the show? Not that early. We've been here about half an hour, I guess, a little bit later. What a fun time, huh? Absolutely. A little bit different here in Dallas. Got some new teams in the league. There's a lot of new for you also. A lot of new. I'm excited about your new offensive coordinator. Excited about the quarterback position. Had a chance to call that team a couple times last year and

some of the additions you've made to your staff. How is all that coming together for you so far? Well, it's a process. I mean, you know, we've kind of taken the full plunge into what, you know, college football in 2024 looks like. We got 53 new players. You know, we got new coaches, obviously. And so, you know, I said this yesterday to a group of Vandy supporters, just, you know, I think program building is –

has changed a lot, you know. I think team building, you know, is still the same. So we have to take the time to get to know each other and use this summer to build connection. And certainly part of that is connection with the new systems and language. But I think there's an interpersonal part of this that's important too. But all of it, you know, has been really encouraging. And I think one of my fears with the portal was,

You would somehow undermine the culture you've built internally. The guys that we brought in have actually enhanced us. I think there's really been a positive change, having new attitudes, new approaches, new experiences. I think the guys that have come in have really appreciated the things that make our program unique. We've had a great summer.

Looking at the two guys in particular that are most notable to me outside of the players, Diego Pavia might be Cole's favorite player of all time. Yeah. You've been talking about him forever. He hasn't lined up at guard yet, so I don't know if I can get him that. We got a decent laugh out of them beating Pavia.

Auburn last year because that was Cole's favorite player and it beat his team super awkward moment for him and the show but looking at at Tim Beck and and in addition to him bringing Jerry Kill and those guys I mean Jerry Kill to do what he did at New Mexico State is insane I mean anybody that knows that job is is wild so did you put an additional layer of importance on the fact that they could do it at a place where very few had and and that's kind of

what maybe made them maybe even more attractive to you? I'm going to give you the long-form answer to this, if that's all right. Please. You know, we played Auburn, I think, the week prior to New Mexico State. And I was at Syracuse back in the day. We played Minnesota when Jerry was there. It was right before kind of he had to step away. He was in a bowl game. I'd always admired him as a guy that's built programs. And I think a part of that is always had a mind for –

you know, um, you know, wanting eventually to take my turn at Vanderbilt and knowing that, you know, he, he had a formula in his career that, that would work, you know, for what we need to do here at Vandy. Um, I ran into him a few years ago when he had just taken the New Mexico state job and had a chance to finally meet him and exchange numbers and just followed his progress. But, um,

When I saw that game, well, go back. One of the things I recognized in their year two is they opened the year with a loss against UMass. And when I saw that, I was hurt for Jerry. You know, I know he had a great first year, and I was hoping for him to build on it. They rattled off a bunch of wins in a row, including the win at Auburn. It came the week after we played them. And I just was like, I became obsessed with it because it's like there's the formula. You know, this is the anatomy of what it looks like.

And so I started to study the game. And I would watch the film from the first snap to the last, all three phases. And what I saw was a disciplined team that was well coached, that was tough.

Again, when I put the film on, I expected on offense to see some 6'5 quarterback that had fallen through the cracks. Instead, I saw Diego, and he throws a pick early in the game and suplexes the linebacker on the sideline. I thought, who in the world is this guy? Tim's offense was creative. It wasn't gimmicky. And so my goal at that point was to...

take the staff out to Las Cruces and visit with them in the offseason. I hadn't made decisions about staffing changes. As that came to the forefront of my mind and what I needed to do, it was very natural for me to look at New Mexico State and went out and interviewed Tim and felt really strongly about it and actually interacted with Jerry on that. It just worked out that it was time for Jerry, too. So what a great thing for me and what a great thing for Vanderbilt to have those two guys on board. Obviously, Tim...

orchestrating the offense and Jerry really serving as a senior advisor to me. He oversees a lot of the operational stuff offensively, allows me to focus on the defense, which is my responsibility now and

It's just been a great – it's great to have his perspective every day. You know, I think for me, look, I know we've done a lot of really good things, and I feel really good about the process. We just haven't had the results yet. And so it's very easy for anyone who's built anything, whether it's a business or, you know, again, obviously a football program or whatever.

You know, you can always start to have doubts creep in. And yet I always come back and say, man, we've done so many things the right way. Having Jerry there in my hip pocket is just another person that can say, this is going really good. But hey, you might want to look at this. This is a place where we can strengthen ourselves.

and that's given me just peace of mind knowing that we're looking at all those operational systems. Everything that serves our program is being scrutinized, and it's moving us forward. So I'm grateful to have him, and look, I'm going to be 43 in the fall. I tell Jerry all the time I feel like I've gotten about 20 years younger having him on my staff. I'm interested quickly, I know you need to run, you've got a lot going on today, from sort of a defensive lens, how you look at that offense. Sure.

You brought up creative but not sort of gimmicky. I feel like it's exactly what an offense is supposed to be. It's the ultimate take what you give us. It does have some options inside of it to force conflict defenders. It just...

But it's almost oversimplified when you watch it. Like, how could this not work? That's what I see when I watch it. It feels like it should work on every play almost. Yeah, it's the art of keeping the ball in play. And I think I was talking to Diego about this the other day. I see his style of play show up in our pass shell, you know, like –

You say take what the offense gives you or defense gives you. That's exactly what it is. It's knowing where to go with the ball when you need an escape. And then the run elements, you know, this was the number 14 rush offense in the country last year, and they did it in ways, again, it wasn't like they're reading the edge with the quarterback and having Diego outrun people. I mean, they found ways to...

create extra gaps with the quarterback run. They did it formationally. They did it with motions. And those are the things that we have to have, right? We got too stagnant. In fact, there was a study we did on unbalanced formations from a year ago. And in our league, I think we were second to last in the number of unbalanced formations we used. Well, we're not creating an advantage if we're not doing things like that to try to outnumber, create a gap.

And those are the things they pay attention to. So it's been refreshing. It's been a pain in my butt to defend, you know. So I think that's always a good thing. If it's causing me stress, then it's going to cause someone else stress eventually. Coach, we appreciate the time. We're going to let you run. Thanks for stopping by. Always great. I love talking football with you. Yeah, this is a great way to start for me. So I appreciate you guys. Thanks a lot. Clark Lee, Vanderbilt head football coach, joining us next. Paul Feinbaum with us after the break. Live from SEC Media Days, McIlroy and Kubelik in the morning.

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