What Vanderbilt coach Clark Lea said about South Carolina

Vanderbilt head football coach Clark Lea met with the media earlier this week to preview the Commodores’ trip to Columbia to take on South Carolina.

Below are some excerpts from a transcript of Lea’s comments and above is a video of his entire press conference.

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OPENING STATEMENT

A chance for us to go on the road again and look to the last two here to finish the season, hopefully with some momentum. I’m excited for the opportunity to compete against South Carolina. I think this is a team, obviously, I know they’re not pleased with where they are in terms of their record. There’s still a lot of skill on that field, and there’s good players. There will be challenges for us.

When you look at them on offense, they’ve been really good. Really effective passing the ball. We know Spencer Rattler is a great competitor and has challenged us. I think when you talk about defending him, you have to keep him caged up. You have to vary his looks. He’s got some talented people that he’s throwing the ball to as well, and that’ll create some matchup challenges for us, but excited for that opportunity.

In terms of our offense, I feel like this is a week where we need to pay attention to building chemistry and connection in the passing game. You know, just coming out of the Auburn game felt like, whether it be the protection issues or throwing routes when they were open, not before they were open or throwing them open, seemed to me like we just held on to the ball a little too long. And there are going to be opportunities for us, just like there were a year ago, offensively against South Carolina.

But it’s about us fine-tuning the things that we need to be good at to have a chance to execute, and again, be in a competitive game in Columbia.

So injury-wise, really holding true. Damarion Thomas will be likely out this week. That came up today. Quincy Skinner working his way back, was able to practice today. Good to see that. C.J. Taylor still week to week with his knee. He’s easy. He’s back involved in terms of individual, but not yet 100%. And so we’re giving him time. We’ll see how he responds as the week goes. And really, that’s it as far as updates from Saturday. Christian James has been fine, and the rest of the guys are looking good.

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On quarterback situation…

A.J. Swann has been able to practice yesterday and today. He’s getting back healthy, which is exciting. I don’t, right now, anticipate anything changing for us in terms of what we’ve done to this point, but I always want to leave room there just because it is about getting the best 11 on the field. So Ken’s (Seals) raring to go and running with the ones. Walt’s (Taylor) preparing for a piece of the plan on Saturday. And then it’s good to have A.J. back in the competition. And so we’ll see how the week shakes out. But again, happy for A.J. to be back feeling better, and also been pleased with Ken and Walt.

On late South Carolina win in the game two years ago…

I think the fourth down, yeah, so look, anytime you’ve got a three-point lead, and you get to six on a field goal, you introduce winning to the opponent, right? Their mindset becomes, a touchdown, an extra point gets them the win. And so I think it does shift the approach to the opposing play caller. Yeah, I think in the moment for me, it was about let’s set up to defend as much of the field as we can possibly defend and not leave them within range on a field goal to tie the game was the thought.

Those decisions sometimes become, you’re right when you’re right, you’re wrong when you’re wrong, and not a lot to do about that in hindsight. I do think an aggressive call there is to go for it, and that the other part of going for it in that situation, I forget exactly where the ball was, maybe right on the 12-yard line, I forget, but you are putting them on a long field, and I think inevitably, just like we saw in the Auburn game when you and I mentioned this after the game too, when we start possession inside the 15, you just, you recognize that your mistakes are magnified in those areas offensively. So you get them to start to drive backed up and maybe they’re a little more conservative in their thought process.

I think they started their drive on the 25, I can’t remember exactly but and then you know, the other part of the change to me and we’ve designed around this but, we had a lot of three-man rush, um, there through the kind of middle of their drive where we gave them time and they were able to find spaces and in that situation, it’s a chunk situation and you’ve got to be able to keep the ball inside in front of you. And they were out of timeouts. You have to force them to churn clock and to use the time to put pressure on them.

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And when you let them out with explosive plays in that scenario, you’re really putting yourself behind the eight ball. So some tactical things I would have changed. And again, you can look back at the decision to kick and be critical of that too. I think there’s a reason to be aggressive in that situation. That’s not to say that I wouldn’t do it again. I think it helps knowing the outcome that I would have reversed it.

As far as what I learned, any loss you’re going to learn, you’re going to learn any game, you’re going to learn something from. That was a painful one. That group had fought really hard to be in that position. It had come from behind. It had a couple of chunk plays early that we had absorbed defensively where then we settled in. Offensively, we were able to create some explosives, if I remember, in that game. And with the lead late in a four-minute situation, you want to be able to put it away. But it was a tough one. We’re a long way from that. But again, we’re hoping to put that level of pressure on our opponent this weekend. That’s going to happen with a focus on who we are and what we do. And that’s how we’ve started the week off.

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