Vanderbilt has lost 23 straight games to Alabama going back almost 40 years. Even so, the Commodores in 2024 are much different than other teams of theirs from years past according to Diego Pavia.

Pavia discussed the approach to Vandy playing ‘Bama in a media availability earlier this week. To him, their team this year is not like any of the others from the past four decades as far as this game, especially from the last three meetings against the Crimson Tide who have lost by an average margin of almost 50.

“This is a whole new team,” said Pavia. “You know, the NIL era is, you know – every team will be different every single year but we’ve got a team full of dogs who prepare every week like they want to play on Sundays.”

Pavia is right, though, in that this isn’t a usual team that some might expect at Vanderbilt.

Yes, the Commodores did lose at Georgia State this season. They also pulled the upset as a two-score underdog in their opener against Virginia Tech in overtime and took a Top-10 team in Missouri to double-overtime in another near upset in CoMo.

With that, the Commodores went back to work over their bye week to prepare for their next six weeks, which will start tomorrow against the No. 1 team in the country.

“You know, we fell just short to the No. 7 team team in the nation. So we’ve got to get over that little edge and start punching some wins here,” Pavia said.

“Yeah, the whole team is fired up to go out there on Saturday. (Randon Fontenette) said it best, you know. If you’re down about this then you ain’t shit, really, is what he said. Like, get up and get back to it so that’s what we did,” said Pavia. “On Saturday, we came out, we punched each other in the face all day on Saturday or Sunday. You know, today was a great practice so we’ll be electric and ready to go.”

In the last three meetings with Alabama, Vanderbilt has lost 34-0, 59-0, and 55-3. They’ll now play them again as an underdog of three-plus scores in Music City on Saturday.

Still, no one, not even the Commodores’ quarterback, knows who’ll win tomorrow for certain.

“The only person that knows who’s going to win on Saturday is God,” said Pavia. “We’ll be prepared. We’re going to do everything we can to win a football game.”

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