I’ll be the first to admit that the box score from Saturday night’s game isn’t pretty. Vanderbilt did average 5 yards per play against a pretty good Ole Miss defense. The Vanderbilt defense honestly probably did better than expected against the high-powered Ole Miss offense, “only” allowing 7.2 yards per play and a success rate just over 50 percent. Going in, I thought those numbers would be a lot worse.
Vanderbilt’s offensive success rate was bad, to be sure, but Clark Lea made up for that a bit by being extremely aggressive on fourth down: the Commodores went for it on fourth down five times and converted three of them.