Alabama Football 2026 vs. Vanderbilt: Previewing the Commodore Defense
· Yahoo Sports
Unfortunately for the Commodores, their defensive performance this year hasn’t been any better than what they’ve put on the field on offense. A year ago, things started to improve for them as head coach Clark Lea promoted up Steve Gregory as a first time DC, and they ultimately finished the season allowing a respectable 22.8 points per game.
In 2026, though, that’s ballooned up to nearly 30 points per game, and they’re 110th in the country in points allowed. They’ve given up over 3o points in 4 of their last 5 games, and even before they started SEC play, they gave up 26 points to Delaware and 31 points to North Carolina State. Basically, their two bestgames of the season were holding a Kamario Taylor-less Miss State to 23 points and Auburn to 21 points. Just brutal.
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Weirdly, they even had some decent continuity from a season ago. Safety CJ Heard is a multi-year starter and one of their top players a year ago. Bryan Longwell returns as the leader at linebacker, and defensive end Mile Capers returns as the team’s leader in sacks and tackles for loss. And yet, things just haven’t really seemed to come together for them. They’re 126th in the country in raw success rate on standard downs – 51% of plays against them on 1st and 2nd down are successful plays. So even though they actually do ok on passing downs and do a good job of preventing explosives, everyone is just moving the chains on them over and over, and they’re very near last in the country in run stuffs.
Their raw yardage doesn’t even look that bad. 221 passing yards and 138 rushing yards allowed per game, and only 4.1 yards per rush attempt isn’t great, but isn’t terrible either. But just the fact that they consistently struggle to get actual stops has them giving up 20 first downs per game, and ultimately, too many points.
A week ago, Lea made some personnel changes and got some good results. It’s obviously hard to separate those changes from the fact that they were playing MSU with no QB, but still…. It was their best game of the season.
Vanderbilt switched up its defense unannounced before the game, moving Martel Hight to wide receiver and starting Cayden Daniels opposite Jordan Matthews at cornerback with Davin Chandler as the nickel and Mason Lewis as a fifth defensive back.
Lea had decided on the arrangement over the open week after Hight had previously experimented with being a two-way player in 2025. After making at least 33 tackles in each of his first three seasons, Hight had lagged behind with 19 in the first eight games of 2026. The new arrangement worked, at least on the defensive end. Lewis led Vanderbilt with 10 tackles, 1.5 tackles for loss and two pass breakups; Chandler had seven tackles, ½ tackle for loss and two pass breakups and Daniels recorded three tackles.
Most of the biggest defensive plays came from the secondary. On Mississippi State’s opening drive, Chandler broke up a 4th-and-1 pass, and Matthews intercepted Swann late in the second quarter that got Vanderbilt a field goal before halftime.
“We emphasized over and over, during the bye week and this week, to just cause more havoc,” Lewis said. “I feel like that would show up today.”
Then there was the decisive play of the game. Vanderbilt had been leading by eight late in the fourth quarter, but Mississippi State drove down the field with a series of chunk plays and got a touchdown, needing a two-point conversion to tie the game.
But the Commodores snuffed out the play. Swann’s pass sailed harmlessly out of the back of the end zone, and Vanderbilt recovered the onside kick.
“That was a great example of just, head body, head body,” Lewis said. “They just scored a touchdown, but we were so focused. … We got the call in and we just executed. We had no doubt that we were going to execute the plan.”
In SEC play prior to the Mississippi State game, Vanderbilt hadn’t recorded more than three tackles for loss or more than one sack in a single game. Against the Bulldogs, the Commodores notched seven tackles for loss and three sacks.
The new havoc and the younger players stepping in on the secondary gives Vanderbilt something to build off defensively going forward after a previous string of rough performances.
Overall, it’s hard to point to any one aspect of the Vandy defense that has performed like it should. They’ve just been generally “meh” across the board this season, outside of being decent at not giving up explosive passes. So, the question is if Alabama can stay patient and move the ball against them without getting in their own way. Ideally, this is a great game for Ryan Grubb to double down his focus on the rushing game, hopefully getting EJ Crowell involved in his first game back from injury.
The question is… Will he? Or will he be determined to have Keelon Russell going deep despite that being the only aspect of the Vandy defense that’s been solid?
For my part, I don’t trust Grubb. But, I also think it really won’t matter all that much – Vanderbilt just isn’t up to par, and that’s most all there is to it.
Lets go with 38 points for the Tide.