Frankly, Franklin steps into a mess. The new Vandy head coach inherits a 2-10 team on the bottom rung of the Southeastern Conference. <\/p>\n
SEC 2011-12 Football Previews: Vanderbilt Commodores<\/strong> The Commodores had current Chicago Bears \u2013 QB Jay Cutler and WR Earl Bennett \u2013 in the middle of the last decade, but that\u2019s where the effusive praise for Vandy football ends. <\/p>\n This program is not much to write home about.<\/p>\n The Commodores have a couple individual players up and down the roster who are talented. Linebacker Chris Marve is excellent. Tight end Brandon Barden is also one of the better ones at his position in the SEC. He returns and will be the lone bright spot on offense. <\/p>\n Vanderbilt actually has a half-decent defensive secondary, highlighted by CB Casey Hayward and SS Sean Richardson. Vandy loses only one player from that unit in 2011 and it should be much improved.<\/p>\n Expect the special teams unit to also see improvement, by way of having all its key contributors back for 2011.<\/p>\n Senior pivot Larry Smith, last year\u2019s starter, was so bad in \u201910 that his hold on the starting job is by no means guaranteed. The silver lining is that new coach Franklin\u2019s specialty is developing QBs (he groomed QB Danny O\u2019Brien at Maryland last year) so whether it is Smith or junior college player or an underclassmen, it really can\u2019t get any worse. [soliloquy id=”82219″]<\/p>\n Neither a pass-catcher nor a runner had more than 500 yards from scrimmage in 2010. Ugh.<\/p>\n The linebacker corps replaces two of its starting three from last season, and someone desperately needs to assert themselves on the defensive line. <\/p>\n Hopefully that job can fall to DT Rob Lohr, who had 35 tackles and four sacks as a sophomore a year ago.<\/p>\n On the offensive line, tackle Wesley Johnson has talent \u2013 he was a Freshman All-American in 2010 \u2013 but the rest of the unit needs to play better in order to get any yield from the offense as a whole. I feel bad that the \u201cWeaknesses\u201d\u00a0 section is quite longer than the \u201cStrengths\u201d, but this is a 2-10 ballclub, after all.<\/p>\n The simple fact is, in a conference as strong and as populated as the SEC, there must be haves and have-nots. Vanderbilt is \u2013 and likely will stay \u2013 on the bottom of that food chain. <\/p>\n They have a laudable academic standing and I\u2019m sure it is a fine place to attend college; they just aren\u2019t very good at football in Nashville.<\/p>\n Vanderbilt has two pushover non-conference opponents in Army and FCS Elon. Beyond that, however, I don\u2019t see the Commodores improving on last year\u2019s efforts.<\/p>\n 9\/3\/11\t 12:00 PM ET\t ELON NCAA football preview guide for the 2011 Vanderbilt Commodores NCAAF betting season. NCAA football gambling guru James Hayes weighs in with his college football picks, and BCS National champion cappers analysis\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":127,"featured_media":33892,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[50296,44530,49957,50643,50644,31311,1121,15668,2921,50640,50641,50642],"class_list":["post-40812","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ncaa-football","tag-2011-sec-football-previews","tag-2012-bcs-lines","tag-bcs-sportsbook-odds","tag-commodores-bcs-futures","tag-commodores-predictions","tag-sec-football-predictions","tag-sec-odds","tag-sec-picks","tag-vanderbilt-commodores","tag-vanderbilt-football-predictions","tag-vanderbilt-gambling-odds","tag-vanderbilt-schedule"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40812","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/127"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40812"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40812\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40849,"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40812\/revisions\/40849"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33892"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40812"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40812"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40812"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nCoach: <\/strong>James Franklin
\n2010 Record: <\/strong>2-10
\nVanderbilt Gambling Odds from JustBet.com to win BCS: +5000<\/strong>
\n Vandy Team Page – Players Stats – Roster – 2011 Schedule –><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\nTeam Strengths<\/h3>\n
Team Weaknesses<\/h3>\n
2011-12 Vanderbilt Football Prediction: 2-10<\/h3>\n
2011 Vanderbilt Commodores Schedule<\/h3>\n
\n9\/10\/11\t 12:00 PM ET\tCONN
\n9\/17\/11\t 12:00 PM ET\tMISS
\n9\/24\/11\t 12:00 PM ET\t @SOCAR
\n10\/8\/11\t 12:00 PM ET\t @ALAB
\n10\/15\/11 12:00 PM ET\tGEO
\n10\/22\/11 12:00 PM ET\tARMY
\n10\/29\/11 12:00 PM ET\tARK
\n11\/5\/11\t 12:00 PM ET\t @FLA
\n11\/12\/11 12:00 PM ET\tKENTY
\n11\/19\/11 12:00 PM ET\t @TENN
\n11\/26\/11 12:00 PM ET\t @WFRST<\/p>\nClick here to check out MORE 2011 college football previews for the 2011-2012 NCAA Football Season!<\/a><\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"