Crucial Season Ahead for Vanderbilt Football

With James Franklin now coaching at Penn State and Derek Mason replacing him after a successful stint as defensive coordinator at Stanford, can the Vanderbilt football program continue to build on the success of the previous three years?

Mason comes over from Stanford, who played a very similar style of smash-mouth physical football as Vanderbilt currently play. Expect plenty of carries for the Commodore running backs and play-action passes run off the back of this. But Coach Mason has already made his impact felt at the SEC Media Days, responding to being asked about emulating the past two seasons by saying, “But why have nine when you can have 10?” He followed that up with, “Why have 10 when you can have 11?” Based on these comments, it’s clear that Mason hopes to see Vanderbilt challenge the best sides in the SEC East like Georgia, Florida, and South Carolina.

The fickle fans at Vanderbilt are expecting the program to continue to enjoy a successful run in the coming seasons despite the change at head coach. Even during the height of the Commodores success under Franklin, they still struggled to sell out Vanderbilt Stadium on a consistent basis. It’s quite clear that Mason’s comments were aimed at the fans to ask them to support the team in numbers. Mason will be under pressure immediately to win games and keep the fan base interested in the 2014 season, otherwise a potential fourth straight bowl appearance could quickly drift away.

On the field, Vanderbilt’s bowl chances still look good. They navigate a schedule that sees them play just four true road games with a neutral location game against Mississippi State at LP Field, which is still in Nashville, so almost like a home game. The toughest out-of-conference opponent they face is Temple and from the SEC West they also draw Ole Miss, so it’s a very manageable slate of games.

Apart from losing the greatest head coach in their history, who managed to recruit some immensely talented players like Zac Stacy and Jordan Matthews (the latter being a big loss at wide receiver from last year), Franklin has also taken a huge part of the 2014 recruiting class from Vanderbilt with him over to Penn State. Long term this may turn into a problem, but with Mason inheriting two very strong classes from 2012 and 2013, it does give them hope. Vanderbilt returns just 10 starters in total from last year, the second-fewest in the SEC ahead of Missouri. The lack of starters on defense might be less of an issue as a new 3-4 base set is being implemented with the help of David Kotulski, who joins Mason from Stanford, where he was the inside linebackers coach. Mason also commented on the SEC Media Day that he was going to run a “no redshirt policy,” meaning that we may see some freshman getting playing time.

It was clear that the media were impressed with Mason. He certainly passed the first test. But with the newly found high expectations of the Vanderbilt fan base coupled with the high academic standards of the school, all whilst playing in arguably the toughest conference in the nation, Derek Mason has one of the toughest jobs in college football this year.

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