Vanderbilt coach Clark Lea is seeking to build out his inaugural Commodores staff, and he met with an up-and-coming Southeastern
Conference assistant coach in Nashville on Friday to discuss the prospect of joining Lea’s staff.
According to FootballScoop, Tyler Santucci, who previously worked alongside Lea on Notre Dame’s renowned defense in 2017 and has
also worked under Dave Clawson, Lea’s former boss, at Wake Forest, was in Nashville this weekend to discuss the defensive coordinator
position on Lea’s Vanderbilt staff.
Santucci is regarded as one of the “top two or three (candidates)” for the Commodores’ defensive coordinator position.
Lea, a former Vanderbilt player who attended high school in Nashville, was hired in late December to lead the Commodores’ team after
the school fired seven-year head coach Derek Mason.
Santucci played collegiately at tiny Stony Brook, but he has been a rising star in the major-college coaching ranks for the past half-decade.
Santucci, a former linebacker, has worked at Wake Forest, Texas State, Notre Dame, and most recently as the linebackers coach for Jimbo
Fisher’s Texas A&M Aggies, who placed fourth in the final Associated Press Top 25 rankings, the program’s highest in nearly 80 years.
Santucci worked with both Lea and current Texas A&M defensive coordinator Mike Elko at Notre Dame, and the three are still very close
to this day. The gang, including Clawson, remained close friends.
“It’s like having a family relationship with them,” claimed a person who knows all of the coaches.
Lea has worked methodically to assemble his first Vanderbilt staff, hiring highly regarded Justin Lustig as assistant head coach / special
teams coordinator, Barton Simmons, former 247 sports recruiting lead and former Montgomery Bell Academy teammate, as Vanderbilt’s
general manager, and Nik Valdiserri in a player personnel role.
