When Clark Lea was the defensive coordinator at Notre Dame, he estimated he spent 100 hours a week doing just that. So when the Vanderbilt coach took over the defensive playcalling in 2024, he felt like he was doing a bit too much.
So entering 2025, Lea decided to no longer hold two jobs. He promoted Steve Gregory, the associate defensive coordinator last season, to defensive coordinator and linebackers coach Nick Lezynski to co-defensive coordinator. These promotions happened ahead of spring practice, which began Tuesday.
“As the year wore on, it felt like more and more that there were gaps in my preparation that I was having late in the week to kind of catch up to and this is all about efficiency of operation,” Lea said. “It felt like Steve Gregory was ready to take on that responsibility. I have a lot of trust in him. I’ve trained him in our system and in our process for a year, and to me, we had room to be better, and that we improved defensively last year. We had some gaps in our performance that I want to see improvement on this year, and Steve’s going to be leading the charge to make those improvements.”
The scheme isn’t likely to be much different from a year ago. Both Gregory and Lezynski were on staff and had a significant hand in the defense in 2024. According to linebacker Randon Fontenette, Gregory took over defensive playcalling late in the season.
Lea also added Bob Shoop, a former Vanderbilt defensive coordinator under James Franklin. Shoop will be a senior defensive analyst and according to Lea, he will help to support Gregory, who is a first-time play caller, with his experience.
Lea said that giving Lezynski a co-coordinator role was part of helping Lezynski achieve his goal of becoming a coordinator. He will help with scripting certain plays and organizing certain units.
How Vanderbilt football…
Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/article/why-vanderbilt-coach-clark-lea-175918689.html
Author : The Tennessean
Publish date : 2025-03-04 17:59:00
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