Vanderbilt Football's Jared Curtis Makes Costly Mistake To Let Arkansas Back Into The Game

NASHVILLE—Vanderbilt football has been in control for nearly all of Saturday’s first half against Arkansas at FirstBank Stadium,but it just let Arkansas back into the game. 

Commodores’ quarterback Jared Curtis dropped back and looked for Junior Sherril on an in-cutting route, but stared down Sherrill and allowed Arkansas cornerback Joker Johnson to jump the route. Johnson intercepted Curtis’ pass and ran it back 25 yards for an Arkansas touchdown. Arkansas had an unnecessary roughness penalty go against it following the play, but the damage was already done. 

Vanderbilt is outdoing Arkansas in every offensive stat, besides turnovers. Yet, that one statistical category has allowed Arkansas–which entered Saturday as a significant underdog–to tie the game at 7-7. 

Curtis has thrown six interceptions this season in comparison to his five touchdowns.

Vanderbilt is 3-2 in games that Curtis has started this season, but it's been loud and clear that it can't win many SEC games if his processing doesn't improve significantly. Curtis is making the transition from small-high school football at Nashville Christian to the SEC, where teams have the athletes to challenge Curtis to make plays with his mind rather than merely his abilities.

Curtis is Vanderbilt first five-star recruit in program history and flipped his commitment from Georgia to Vanderbilt on signing day, indicating that Vanderbilt had a chance to win big following the Diego Pavia era. Vanderbilt veteran Blaze Berlowitz and Curtis were entrenched in a quarterback battle all offseason and through the first two weeks of the season before Curtis won the battle with a strong second half performance in Vanderbilt's week two matchup against Delaware.

For Curtis to lead Vanderbilt where it wants to go, though, he has to continue developing.

“There’s glimpses of brilliant play, and then there's also moments where it feels like the operation comes to a gridlock because we're not processing at the speed we need to process at,” Lea said in regard to Curtis in the middle of fall camp while Curtis was in the midst of the quarterback competition. ”The greatest challenge for us is not judging him for that right now. We have the luxury of having two more weeks here and coaching him through it to see where we can get him, to see if he is capable of being the guy that we rely on."

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