How will the Vandy defense look to attack Ty Simpson?
Last year, Vanderbilt head coach Clark Lea wound up relieving his former defensive coordinator of playcalling duties before the season and did the job himself. It paid off, as the Commodores went from giving up 36 points per game in 2o23 to only 23 points per game in 2024. A two-touchdown improvement is massive.
Still, Lea couldn’t pull both duties forever, and he hired a new defensive coordinator, Steve Gregory, this offseason. Gregory was a starting safety for the San Diego Chargers and New England Patriots in the 2006-2013 time frame before he called it a career. He then joined the Detroit Lions as a defensive assistant in 2018 before getting promoted to DB coach for a season, then moved to the Miami Dolphins for a couple of seasons in the same role before getting fired after 2023.
He then joined the Vanderbilt as a consultant a year ago, and has moved up to defensive coordinator this year – his first time in that role at any level.
It seemed like any other football play at the time.
Steve Gregory, a safety for the New England Patriots, saw the ball on the ground. He scooped it up and ran, untouched, for a touchdown.
It was only later when Gregory saw the news coverage of the story that he realized that play would be immortalized as the “butt fumble” − the play where New York Jets quarterback Mark Sanchez collided with an offensive lineman’s butt, causing the fumble that Gregory recovered for a touchdown.
Gregory, who grew up in Staten Island, had become a key part of one of the most infamous plays in NFL history, and it happened right in his backyard at MetLife Stadium.
“The funny thing is … I come here and nobody knows I’m the butt fumble guy,” Gregory, now Vanderbilt’s defensive coordinator, told The Tennessean. “People start to find out about it and it’s like, oh, I didn’t know that was you. That’s crazy. Everyone knows the play, but they don’t necessarily know that I’m the guy that actually scored a touchdown.”
To this point, we don’t know a whole lot about Gregory’s scheme or playcalling tendencies, but we do know that he loves to blitz. Linebacker Bryan Longwell was an excellent blitzer a year ago, and now he’s already got 5 tackles for loss in as many games. Edge rusher Milers Capers has a team high 8 TFLs, and then safety Randon Fontenette has 4 TFLs already as well. Add in some impressive production from the defensive line and 17 total players who have at least one TFL…. And you have a team with 43 TFLs and 14 sacks already in the young season.
The defensive line uses a pretty similar front to what Alabama runs with Kane Wommack: A hulking nose tackle, a defensive tackle, and a 275-lb defensive end, plus an edge rusher that’s more of a hybrid linebacker. However, they tend to focus much more on gap shooting, other than the NT, Glenn Seabrooks. Thus far, they’ve been exceptional against the run, outside of the first two drives against South Carolina.
The secondary is where the defense may get a little suspect, though. They run a lot of spot zone drops and zone blitzes, which, while it can lead to the occasional interception (2 of their 3 picks this season are from a defensive tackle and a linebacker), also leaves a lot of holes in the coverages, particularly in the 10-15 yard dig route areas. Most of the defense backs play solidly when the ball is near them, but the scheme itself often leaves open space for completions with no defensive backs truly in coverage to contest the pass.
Safety CJ Heard then gets tasked with cleaning up a whole lot of middle-field passes, and he leads the team with 23 tackles.
While the Vanderbilt offense is a formidable one, and one that may hold a schematic advantage over Alabama, their defense is in the opposite situation. They’re fairly good at stopping the run and causing some chaos with zone blitzes, but Alabama’s offense has excelled at attacking that 10-15 yard zone window over the middle of the field, and Ryan Grubb’s love of screen passes should counter Vandy’s incessant blitzing fairly well.
Barring turnover weirdness, I think Alabama scores pretty regularly. 38 points seems like a good number to go with on this one, though I could see Vanderbilt’s intent on shortening the game on offense cut down the total score a little.
Category: General Sports
