Vandy has been something of a revelation through the early part of this season. While the Dore’s have never been too much of a threat within the SEC, the last 5 years or so have been especially brutal for them, having won only 3 total SEC games from 2019-2023.

They opened the season with a big win over Virginia Tech, and then took #7 Missouri into overtime last week, so the Commodores are riding high and believing that they can hang with any team in the country this year.

They’re averaging an astounding 37 points per game, and it seems much of this turnaround may can be credited to new OC, Tim Beck. He was a National Championship winning head coach at Pittsburg State for a decade for taking an offensive coordinator job at New Mexico State, where the Aggies turned around from a decade of incompetence to make the CUSA championship and, hilariously, beat Auburn last year.

His QB at NMSU, Diego Pavia, was named the CUSA Player of the Year after an outstanding season…. And he transferred to Vanderbilt along with Beck.

The Aggies’ offense was predicated on the running game, where it had 409 rushing attempts and averaged 5.8 yards per attempt.

Perhaps the most encouraging part of that is the variety within that running game. New Mexico State quarterback Diego Pavia ran for 856 yards on the season while the Aggies also had two running backs run for over 500 yards on the season.

Beck’s offense will need a quarterback who can run as well as a more capable offensive line to be effective but has the potential to be exactly what Vanderbilt needs; something that it can use to form its offensive identity and something that can help to narrow the gap between the Commodores and the rest of the SEC.

Expect to see more motion, more deception, more eye-candy and more flair out of Vanderbilt’s offense in 2024 than it had in 2023. Expect a running game and quirky scheme that Vanderbilt will try to take pride in.

Tim Beck runs a pistol-based offense that is focused on the read option run, and everything builds off of that. It’s pretty much identical the offensive scheme Chris Ault pioneered at Nevada and Greg Roman/Colin Kaepernick set the NFL on fire with for a season and half with the 49ers back in 2012.

Nearly every run play is a QB read option, and even many of the passes often keep an element of motion to have the start of the play look similar to the start of a read option.

Through 4 games, Diego Pavia, the QB, leads the team with 71 carries for 279 rushing yards, and he’s added 721 passing yards and 6 TDs without a single interception.

His partner in crime is RB Sedrick Alexander, who’s got 217 rushing yards on 51 carries so far. Alexander is a 5’9” sparkplug of an interior rusher who is excellent at making cutbacks in the zone blocking scheme and slipping behind rushers who bite on the QB keeper. He’s just slippery enough and tough enough in the hole that he often glances off of defenders without taking direct blows and gets a ton of hidden extra yardage right in the thick of things.

Meanwhile, Pavia does most of his damage on the edges, using a combination of short area-burst and a surprising stutter step that often leaves a defensive end grasping at air as he barrels for the 1st down marker… And he’d not afraid to go shoulder-first into a defensive back.

In the passing game, much of the production has come from TE Eli Stowers. The former Texas A&M recruit played both TE and QB in his college career, and had 366 receiving yards with New Mexico State last year before following Beck and Pavia to Vanderbilt. At 6’4” 215, he’s a tall target who’s great at slipping past linebackers to give his QB a good security blanket, and he can often make the first man miss and get first downs when it’s needed the most.

The rest of the ‘Dores’ receivers don’t have too many catches yet, but senior Quincy Skinner brings a couple of years of starting experience, and Junior Sherrill was an exciting surprise as a freshman last year who many have high hopes for his future as a breakout player.

I expect Vandy to go with a hearty dose of outside runs from Pavia, and they’ll likely go deep off of play action early to try to capitalize on the downfield spots that Georgia cashed in on against Alabama.

Unfortunately for the Commodores, Alabama’s defensive scheme is custom built on stopping the edges and QB keepers on read options, so Vanderbilt’s major staple of the offense seems likely to be neutralized. Can they connect on some deep shots, and can they get yards up the middle with RB handoffs? Because otherwise, Alabama will be able to sit on the QB keepers and short passes while letting the bigger DL do their thing against the interior rush.

I think Vandy scores on a busted coverage once, and they get a score, probably a FG, on a decent drive after an explosive run. But other than that, it’s mostly gloom as Wommack’s defense shuts down the Pistol-based offense.