It’s a wild night in Nashville, Tennessee as the Vanderbilt Commodores shocked the country by defeating the No. 1 ranked Alabama Crimson Tide on Saturday night. Alabama couldn’t fight back into the game in a nailbiter that came down to Vanderbilt football needing multiple first downs on their final possession to secure the win. The frenzied Vanderbilt football fans of course rushed the field and brought down the field goal posts, via a post from Vandy Football on X.
Just one week after being on top of the world when they beat the Georgia Bulldogs, Alabama was brought back to reality. Led by quarterback Diego Pavia’s 16-of-20 passing for 252 yards and two touchdowns, plus another 20 carries for 56 yards, the Commodores not-quite triple-option offense under offensive coordinator Tim Beck will certainly be the talk of college football.
Last week, Vanderbilt football nearly took down Missouri, losing by just three points to the SEC powerhouse.
Now, Vandy and their unique offense will garner all sorts of conversation in a college football landscape dominated by spread offenses.
How Vanderbilt football brought down the Alabama juggernaut
Former Alabama head coach Nick Saban just derided Vanderbilt, unprovoked and unprompted, just a few weeks ago.
“The only place you play in the SEC that’s not hard to play in is Vanderbilt,” Saban said. “When you play at Vanderbilt, you have more fans there than they have.”
While that may be true, it’s the hubris that cost the Crimson Tide. Well that and a defense that was caught flat-footed against an offensive scheme that is unique.
Speaking about his offense before the season began, Beck pointed out the push to be different via Joey Dwyer of Vandy Sports.
“We dont want to be like everybody else,” Beck says. “We don’t want to run the same exact plays as everybody else, we feel like we have to be a little bit different. To turn things around here I think it’s extremely important to be different.
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“On Sunday when defensive coordinators start watching us on video it’s not the same thing they saw the week before,” Beck said of his offense relative to other SEC offenses. “We like to be able to use a lot of different personnel groups because we want to try to keep the defensive coordinators scrambling a little bit.”
Vandy running back Sedrick Alexander, who led the team with 64 rushing yards and two touchdowns, summed it up the best.
“It’s gonna be chaos,” Alexander said of Beck’s offense. “We’re gonna have defense going left, right, they’re gonna be hitting the wrong gaps, defending the wrong gaps.”
The 3-2 Commodores could next shock the world when they face the Texas Longhorns on Saturday, October 26.
