NASHVILLE, Tenn. — The best-looking Vanderbilt football team since the 2018 version that had Ke’Shawn Vaughn and Kyle Shurmur, a team with a real shot at Vanderbilt’s first winning record since 2013, finished spring ball Saturday in an intimate setting.
A few hundred people took in the “spring game,” which was actually an offense vs. defense scrimmage with modified scoring — which is actually a more interesting view of a team than a traditional game splitting up both sides of the ball — on a cool, wet day at Vanderbilt’s Soccer and Lacrosse Complex. It was there because work is being done on FirstBank Stadium. That’s a positive. It was only available to viewers on ESPN+ streaming. That isn’t.
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But the devoted fans on hand and on their devices got intriguing glimpses in what turned out to be a 37-30 win for the defense. They saw a defense that has become seasoned and salty, so far beyond what it was two years ago in Clark Lea’s first spring as head coach. They saw De’Rickey Wright with a pick six. They saw C.J. Taylor flying around and making plays. They saw early enrollee freshman Sedrick Alexander and Chase Gillespie provide juice in the running game. They saw quarterback AJ Swann flash his playmaking in challenging conditions.
They saw … wait, No. 8 in white, is that the same No. 8? He’s still here?
Yeah, and Ken Seals can still play, too. The fourth-year quarterback, who started as a true freshman and showed promise for a terrible Derek Mason team in 2020, hasn’t taken a snap for Vanderbilt since Lea’s debut season of 2021. He was told a year ago that Mike Wright would be supplanting him as QB1 in 2022, though he didn’t know at the time that Swann would also eventually pass him and relegate him to QB3.
Never even knew that picture existed😂😂 just a couple kids man.. https://t.co/a8JEwcpbdp
— Ken Seals (@KenSealsQB) December 18, 2022
“I’d go back to the locker room after practice and I didn’t even need to shower,” Seals told The Athletic of last season, so just as Wright was a lock to find his way to the transfer portal once Swann claimed control of the position, Seals was considered a given as well.
Wright’s at Mississippi State now. Seals is still around. This is a big deal. It isn’t easy to keep quarterbacks healthy, especially in the SEC, especially at Vanderbilt, and it isn’t easy to have experienced depth in a quarterback room anywhere in college football.
“It means a lot, because Ken means a lot to me,” Lea said Saturday evening after the final football act of the spring. “He’s a great leader for us. He’s grown and matured in so many ways. I think he would tell you he’s experienced self-discovery here and has learned a lot about himself. He’s tough, he’s consistent, he’s dependable. He cares about his teammates. And you know what? He’s stepping into higher levels of performance too. I’m proud of Ken, I respect him, and maybe that’s the biggest compliment I can give him. I respect him tremendously for his toughness and his willingness to keep stepping in and competing.”
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It wasn’t easy for Seals to decide to stay and give Vanderbilt experienced depth in a 2023 quarterback room that also includes Drew Dickey, Walter Taylor and Hayden Moses. A four-star recruit per some services out of Weatherford, Texas, he signed with Vanderbilt over offers from Cincinnati, NC State, Minnesota and others. He was the primary bright spot in the 0-9 season of 2020 that got Mason fired — starting all nine games and completing 64.6 percent of his passes for a Vanderbilt freshman record of 1,928 yards and 12 touchdowns.
Lea came in and impressed Seals and Wright immediately, convincing both to stay. Seals held off Wright for the starting job in 2021, though they both played, but then Seals suffered a broken finger on his throwing hand against Florida in the sixth game of the season. He was able to return a month later against Kentucky and suffered a sports hernia.
Wright took advantage, took over the starting job. Seals toughed it out and stayed active, getting on the field late in a season-ending loss at Tennessee.
“I was 1-for-1 — so I’m 100 percent in Neyland (Stadium) in my career,” Seals joked.
Wright, a natural and outspoken leader and a difference-making athlete, was honing his accuracy as a passer and making a case to lead the offense moving forward. Still, Seals did not expect what he heard from Lea and offensive coordinator Joey Lynch in a meeting heading into 2022 spring ball, that Wright would be getting all the No. 1 reps.
“That really caught me off guard,” Seals said. “It was an emotional meeting for me.”
He stuck with it. He supported Wright, a friend from the time they both arrived as freshmen in 2020, though it’s never as simple as coaches like to tell everyone for a quarterback room to stay harmonious.
He watched the gifted Swann leapfrog him on the depth chart in the fall. He resolved to stay prepared, even amid the practices that produced no perspiration, reminding himself how embarrassed he would be if injuries returned him to the field and he wasn’t ready. Then Wright lost his job to Swann. Wright and Seals had more common ground.
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“We went through the same situation, essentially, and that connected us in a way,” Seals said of Wright. “Our frustrations brought us closer together. We actually grew in our relationship a lot last year.”
Seals found solace from other sources as well. He needed it. He said he felt “isolated” and “embarrassed” after plummeting on the depth chart.
“Why am I still doing this?” is a question that crossed his mind at times, and it’s not like Seals couldn’t find another place to play. That has been made clear to his family through back channels in the past year.
Roommates Ethan Barr and Wilson Long helped. Watching “Family Guy” to clear his mind helped. Vanderbilt team chaplain Lance Brown helped. He invited Seals to be part of a small group of players who met every Thursday night to talk about spirituality and the struggles of college life.
Then something that “I have to call a ‘God thing’” happened, Seals said. He received and read an email from a Vanderbilt alum — a “miracle itself,” Seals said, because he gets hundreds a day. The alum invited Seals to drive out to his office, about a half hour away, so they could go to lunch. The alum said he had noticed Seals on Saturdays still engaged with the team, still energetic on the sidelines, and he appreciated that attitude given Seals’ personal disappointment. They talked a lot about faith. They started a friendship that remains strong today.
“It was just a weird time, very tough to deal with and process, but it’s all made me a different person,” Seals said. “In the last year I’ve seen more growth in myself spiritually than ever before, and I’m honestly so grateful for the conversations I’ve been able to have and the people who have helped me. I’ve come out the other side of this changed, and if I’m ever presented the opportunity to play again, to have any success on the field, I’m not gonna handle it the same way.”
Seals strongly considered leaving Vanderbilt after the season. He reached out to family members, close friends and high school coaches, inviting advice from all of them on what he should do. One close family member, he said, told him: “Look how they’ve treated you, they haven’t appreciated you or treated you fairly.”
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But Wright, who came in for an injured Swann late in the season and directed huge wins over Kentucky and Florida to deliver a 5-7 season, got into the portal because Swann remains the future at the position for Vanderbilt. Seals is one semester from getting his degree in human organizational development with a minor in computer science. And he had more important discussions with Lea and Lynch as well. He came away seeing the value of being Vanderbilt’s QB2 in 2023.
This is a story of a college athlete taking the increasingly less common path of sticking with a difficult situation. And it’s the story of a program that hopes to make such choices uncommonly frequent. As Vanderbilt football GM Barton Simmons recently told The Athletic, this offseason has seen just eight Commodores transfer out and one in — “by far the lowest in the SEC,” he said — and the Commodores are “proud to not be portal kings.”
That means the idea of a true development program must be believed and touted by more than Lea and his coaches. Seals has three years of eligibility left, still dreams of the NFL and could end up using his last two somewhere else if he finds an ideal situation. Either way, he’s a believer.
“I love how Coach Lea talks about a competitive attitude and mindset,” Seals said. “The culture here, the core values, the fact that we’re an actual brotherhood, I think it’s absolutely rare. Especially in college football today where everything is so transactional. With the money involved now, it’s the epitome of transactional relationships. I don’t know how many deep relationships there are in college football anymore.
“That might be an over-generalization, but I was afraid to go into the arena and be viewed as just a football player and not as a person. I really don’t believe anyone out there is doing it like Vanderbilt is doing it right now. We put people over players and I think it’s really special. And I really respect Coach Lea for all he’s done with that. I fit here, whether I’m on the field or not.”
He was on the slippery field Saturday and, like Swann, didn’t have tons of success — Seals was 8-for-19 for 70 yards and a touchdown, Swann 9-for-15 for 116 yards and a touchdown — against a defense loaded with returning experience. But he’s 6 feet 3, 225 with a good arm, good athleticism and a history that includes quality stretches against SEC defenses. He’s had a challenging year and has come out of it in a better place, in the same location. And in the fall he will earn, at the minimum, showers after every practice.
(Photo of Ken Seals: Kim Klement / USA Today)
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