{"id":2609,"date":"2016-10-19T17:36:49","date_gmt":"2016-10-19T21:36:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordoncollegefootball.com\/?p=2609"},"modified":"2025-09-13T15:07:36","modified_gmt":"2025-09-13T19:07:36","slug":"vanderbilt-cunningham-and-sims-lead-georgia-upset","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/2016\/10\/19\/vanderbilt-cunningham-and-sims-lead-georgia-upset\/","title":{"rendered":"Vanderbilt&#8217;s Cunningham and Sims Lead Georgia Upset"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2>Vanderbilt&#8217;s Cunningham and Sims Lead Georgia Upset<\/h2>\n<h3>The \u2018Dores went down to Georgia they were looking for a win to steal\u2026<\/h3>\n<p>Saturday the <strong>Vanderbilt Commodores<\/strong> went into <strong>Athens<\/strong> and upended the <strong>Georgia\u00a0Bulldogs<\/strong>. Specifically they <em>finally<\/em> finished a game, and held on to a one-point upset victory. As the\u00a0first conference road win in his career, the defeat over Georgia was certainly a notable\u00a0victory for head coach <strong>Derek Mason<\/strong>. Furthermore, the college football\u00a0world has taken notice and delivered almost as many honors as <strong>Zach Cunningham<\/strong> delivered tackles, with\u00a0<strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.vucommodores.com\/sports\/m-footbl\/spec-rel\/101716aaa.html\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">SEC Player of the Week<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0given to Cunningham for Defensive Player and <strong>Darrius Sims<\/strong>\u00a0for\u00a0Special Teams Player. College football fans live and die for their teams, and the lights out performance that this duo delivered Saturday is what Vandy fans have been waiting for.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">R. Williams.<br \/>Cunningham.<br \/>Sims.<br \/>Hurts.<br \/>J. Williams.<br \/>Barnett. <\/p>\n<p>Week 7 Players of the Week \u00bb <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/1rJpRrmHqu\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">https:\/\/t.co\/1rJpRrmHqu<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/qJWK6GrFhw\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">pic.twitter.com\/qJWK6GrFhw<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Southeastern Conference (@SEC) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/SEC\/status\/788046938860056576?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">October 17, 2016<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<h3>Special Delivery<\/h3>\n<p>It is no secret that special teams have been a problem for Vanderbilt the last two seasons. With the arrival of <strong>Jeff Genyk,<\/strong> the special teams have played better. Although they can still be inconsistent at times, improvements are noticeable. Darrius Sims set up nicely for the first touchdown of the game with a 95-yard return on the opening kickoff against the Dawgs. This was Sims&#8217; second special teams award in his career as kickoff returner. In 2014, he\u00a0won by returning a pair of kickoffs against <strong>South Carolina<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>Georgia only gave him one opportunity to run the ball, and he gained 29 of his 124 yards on the day. Sims is needs 44 more return yards to surpass Vanderbilt\u2019s all-time leader in kick return yardage <strong>Mark Johnson<\/strong>. Sims and Cunningham discussed the record and the win with the press on Tuesday.<\/p>\n<p>https:\/\/youtu.be\/ppJtWBPtSY8<\/p>\n<h3>Black Death Defense<\/h3>\n<p>With pre-season first team All-SEC Honors and <strong>All-American<\/strong> selections due to a dominant 2015 season, Cunningham has taken his game to the next level. In fact, he leads the SEC with 81 total tackles and 13 tackles for a loss. With a career high of 19 tackles on Saturday, Cunningham earned Defensive Player of the Week honors from the SEC,\u00a0CBSSports.com, and Athlon Sports. He also earned National Defensive Player of the Week from the prestigious\u00a0<strong>Walter Camp Football\u00a0Foundation,\u00a0<\/strong>as well as the\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.sportswriters.net\/fwaa\/news\/2016\/nagurski161018.html\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><strong>FWAA\/Bronko Nagurski<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0committee.<\/p>\n<p>Cunningham\u2019s relentless play helped Vandy significantly limit Georgia\u2019s premier backs <strong>Nick Chubb<\/strong> and <strong>Sony Michel<\/strong> to 75 yards, a season low. Notably, his biggest play of the game came with 56 seconds left in the fourth;\u00a0Cunningham delivered his 19<sup>th<\/sup> tackle of the day. It was a fourth-and-1 stop to effectively end the game, and seal the victory for the Commodores. \u00a0In true fashion of a competitor, Cunningham is striving for more.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">ZC on whether it is possible to get more than 19 tackles in a game: &quot;Absolutely, I missed a few tackles in that game&quot;<\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Vanderbilt Football (@VandyFootball) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/VandyFootball\/status\/788436983169355777?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">October 18, 2016<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<h3>Any Given Saturday<\/h3>\n<p>The Dores take on <strong>Tennessee State<\/strong> on Saturday night for their Homecoming. As Mason said in his press conference on Tuesday afternoon \u201cWe respect everyone. We will be ready to play a 5-1 Tennessee State team.\u201d The Dores are 3-4 entering Saturday&#8217;s game. In any event, they have a tough road ahead of them for the last four games of their schedule. They will travel to <strong>Auburn<\/strong> and <strong>Missouri<\/strong>, as well as\u00a0host <strong>Ole Miss<\/strong> and <strong>Tennessee<\/strong>\u00a0to complete the season.<\/p>\n<p>For the most part, the Dores have been within reach of victory in all of their SEC games this season. Thus, there is no reason they cannot pull off another upset. They are approaching each game one-day at a time, an as Mason so eloquently stated &#8220;We are trying to turn this snowflake into a snowball\u201d. College football fans have a saying \u201cany given Saturday\u201d as anything can happen&#8230;just ask Georgia.<\/p>\n<p>Main Photo<\/p>\n<div class=\"getty embed image\" style=\"background-color: #fff; display: inline-block; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue',Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; color: #a7a7a7; font-size: 11px; width: 100%; max-width: 594px;\">\n<div style=\"padding: 0; margin: 0; text-align: left;\"><a style=\"color: #a7a7a7; text-decoration: none; font-weight: normal !important; border: none; display: inline-block;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gettyimages.com\/detail\/614894514\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Embed from Getty Images<\/a><\/div>\n<div style=\"overflow: hidden; position: relative; height: 0; padding: 70.033670% 0 0 0; width: 100%;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"display: inline-block; position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; margin: 0;\" src=\"\/\/embed.gettyimages.com\/embed\/614894514?et=5gjmQP0TSld-16WC-4xHZw&amp;viewMoreLink=off&amp;sig=9lU0TE1qT7PHwLtSMF32AB9SMTNepHoz50LMrJIdp18=&amp;caption=true\" width=\"594\" height=\"416\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"margin: 0;\">\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Vanderbilt&#8217;s Cunningham and Sims Lead Georgia Upset The \u2018Dores went down to Georgia they were looking for a win to steal\u2026 Saturday the Vanderbilt Commodores went into Athens and upended the Georgia\u00a0Bulldogs. Specifically they finally finished a game, and held on to a one-point upset victory. As the\u00a0first conference road win in his career, the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1643,"featured_media":2633,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"1","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3,35578],"tags":[374,128,65,806,20,415,96,373],"class_list":["post-2609","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sec","category-georgia-bulldogs","tag-darrius-sims","tag-derek-mason","tag-georgia-bulldogs","tag-jeff-genyk","tag-sec","tag-sec-east","tag-vanderbilt-commodores","tag-zach-cunningham"],"modified_by":"Michael Kovacs, ADMIN","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2609","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1643"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2609"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2609\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78470,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2609\/revisions\/78470"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2633"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}