How Virginia Tech game will provide insight on Clark Lea’s Vanderbilt football rebuild

In 2023, coach Clark Lea didn’t do enough to help Vanderbilt football evolve the way he intended, he said Tuesday at his media availability.

That team finished 2-10, with the two wins coming in the first two games of the season. The Commodores lost all their games against Power Five competition by double digits.

Virginia Tech, the Commodores’ opponent on Saturday, started 2-4 with losses to Rutgers, Purdue and Marshall before finishing 7-6. New Mexico State started 2-3 and finished 10-5. Among a slate of wholesale changes in the offseason, Lea brought in former Aggies head coach Jerry Kill, offensive coordinator Tim Beck and quarterback Diego Pavia.

“A team that improves through the season is a testament of a good coaching staff, and I think it was a measure of my performance as head coach,” Lea said. “I thought that last year, it wasn’t for lack of trying, I just never found the formula to get that group to go beyond the performance we delivered.”

Although improvement through the season is somewhat of a litmus test for Lea, 2024 starts with an important game right off the bat. In the Hokies on Saturday (11 a.m. CT, ESPN), Vanderbilt will be facing a bowl team from a year ago. To have any hope of getting to six wins, the Commodores will likely need to defeat Virginia Tech.

During the 2021 season, Lea’s first, the team also finished 2-10. But Lea said he felt there was hope at the end of that season, and in 2022, Vanderbilt started 3-6 before winning two games in November to get to 5-7 − albeit with a crushing loss to Tennessee at the end.

“If I were to share a disappointment that I had, outside of the pain of the results from last season, it would be that I didn’t do enough to get our program to evolve into change,” Lea said. “And it just felt like we could never get that team to the performance that we were proud of, and we suffered because of it. So I’m really interested to start the season. I certainly would love to get off to a great start, that would obviously be a lot of fun.”

Lea took over as the defensive coordinator himself after firing Nick Howell. Lea said that calling the defense himself has been one of his most fun times. With Lea focusing more on defensive duties, Kill has been designated the de facto “head coach of the offense,” with Beck calling plays there.

It will be weeks or months before we truly know how well Lea’s rebuild has worked, but as Lea knows, Saturday against the Hokies will be a big clue as to how 2024 will go.

DIEGO PAVIA How Vanderbilt football transfer Diego Pavia’s unrelenting competitiveness landed in Nashville

Aria Gerson covers Vanderbilt athletics for The Tennessean. Contact her at agerson@gannett.com or on Twitter @aria_gerson.