TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — As chaos ensued, Kane Wommack tracked down Zabien Brown for one more conversation before leaving the field. Brown was the center of attention, his interception with less than a minute to play sealing Alabama’s win over Georgia on Saturday.
It was the biggest moment of Brown’s young career and offered redemption after he had been targeted throughout the game. Wommack, who trusted Brown, a true freshman, wanted to put the game and the final drive into perspective.
“Those are the moments that will make your career,” Wommack said he told Brown. “We’re going to build and learn off of this but what a phenomenal job battling back. I’ve never seen a freshman compete like that. Proud of you.”
Trust was key in Alabama’s win on Saturday. It was the first time that Wommack truly opened up his defensive playbook this season and entrusted his group to carry out the full game plan. That resulted in 11 “game-changers” as Wommack describes them — turnovers (four), sacks (three), three-and-outs (three) and a safety.
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According to TruMedia, Alabama’s defense is ranked eighth nationally in stop rate (79.2 percent), which is the percentage of a defense’s drives that end in punts, turnovers or turnovers on downs.
“There’s a reason why I wanted Kane to be here,” coach Kalen DeBoer said. “I saw it back in 2019 when I was at Indiana with him. Whether it was schematically or how he brought a unit together, just the support he gives me and the type of person he is and I can go on and on.
“Kane has done a great job preparing the defense, allowing them to play fast and do the things they’re doing. Four takeaways against a team that hadn’t had any turnovers, that’s a big deal.”
Now into SEC play, more of Wommack’s “SwarmD” will reveal itself. The scheme was a question mark entering the season, mainly how a shift in philosophy from Nick Saban’s scheme to this one would uphold the standard that has been set within the program. It has been a mixed bag, but week-over-week growth on defense is the key to Alabama continuing to ascend.
The defense has been elite in some areas, like stop rate, third-down rate (17.2 percent, which is second nationally) and yards allowed per play (4.1, 11th nationally). But Alabama is allowing 196.5 passing yards per game (52nd) and 119.3 rushing yards per game (46th). Saturday’s win highlighted the ceiling of what the defense can be but reinforced certain areas of concern that future teams could exploit.
The challenge is finding the necessary consistency to play to the level needed for championship contention.
“We’ve got to do a great job of going from a game that had a lot of attention and a lot of momentum swings and do the same thing over and over again,” Wommack said. “Success, if you allow it, will breathe complacency into your program. You have to fight to be able to play to the standard week in and week out. That’s certainly going to be the challenge for us.”
Following Saban has been a storyline and pressure largely saved for DeBeor, who directly replaced him as the head coach. But Wommack succeeded Saban as the architect of Alabama’s defense, and players like fifth-year senior Tim Smith wondered how Wommack would operate as the new coordinator.
It didn’t take long for the defense to respond.
“His first day here, he commanded the defensive room,” Smith said. “Every position was in there; it was like, ‘Sit up,’ and he said ‘SwarmD, lock in’ — that’s our response. That’s how he starts every meeting so it forces us to pay attention. I liked that he commanded the room, understanding that it’s his defense.”
It’s a defense that employs what’s called “vision coverage,” a zone-based scheme where there are three to four rushers, and the other players have their eyes on the quarterback. That’s a contrast from Saban’s match coverage scheme, which was a hybrid of man-to-man and zone coverage.
“When you can put your eyes on the quarterback, now you are not just defending people or grass but defending the people on the grass the quarterback wants to throw the ball to,” Wommack said.
That style allows for the defense to use several coverages without changing personnel or even its alignment from snap to snap. Against Georgia, the defense was able to disguise itself throughout the night, which created confusion for Georgia’s offense and ultimately forced mistakes.
“Sometimes we are going to show a pre-snap picture, an immediate post-snap picture and then switch that picture,” Wommack said. “That’s where you could tell we got (Georgia quarterback Carson Beck) a little bit off-kilter, and he threw us the ball a couple of times just simply because we’re showing him one picture pre-snap, a different picture right at the snap and then rotating to something else entirely as the play is going on, and we were able to affect him a number of times. Pressure allows you to be able to speed up the quarterback’s tempo in the throw game.”
Pressure mixed with disguised coverages is the name of the game. Alabama blitzed four times as much against Georgia (12.2 percent) as it had in its previous games (3.3 percent), resulting in 11 quarterback pressures (one led to a safety that extended the Tide’s lead to 30-7). But what’s most intriguing about Alabama’s defense is the number of players contributing.
Alabama regularly has rotated more than 20 players throughout the early part of the season. That didn’t change against Georgia as 20 players (seven defensive linemen, five linebackers and eight defensive backs) played double-digit snaps. It’s a mix of players from fifth-year veterans like Smith to true freshmen like Brown. Developing playable depth for a long season is a challenge across the country, and how Wommack has gone about teaching the scheme has allowed Alabama to get a jumpstart on that through the first month of the season.
“I think we’re really intentional about having a short-term development plan to get young players on the field,” Wommack said. “We’ve always done that in this system. We’ve always been able to play freshmen because of that. There’s some there’s some details that are challenging for young players to come in and learn, but we feel like we have created a system that is simple enough for a young man to learn and then detailed enough for the nuances as you go.”
Wommack’s foundation as a coach comes from his father, Dave, whose defense Wommack is running today. The two shared an embrace shortly after the Georgia game amid the excitement on the field, but Wommack already had started looking ahead.
“We have to get better,” he said.
There’s an understanding within the defense that a more consistent effort is needed. The second half of the Georgia game saw Alabama allow 27 points, four fourth-down conversions and 366 total yards. A few days removed, Wommack identified what went wrong and where the defense goes from here.
“When you go up 30-7, you’re playing a very different style of game,” Wommack said. “Essentially that team now has four downs to get a first down. They’re going to be way more aggressive on first and second down, take more shots downfield, knowing that they’re going to be in a go scenario on fourth down. It’s one of the most challenging things to handle as a defense. They can take their time; they can take those shots downfield.
“I thought, at times, we handled it really well to get them to fourth-down situations (Georgia was 3-for-10 on third down in the second half), but we were not able to execute and get off the field. We needed one more stop, one more takeaway, and certainly, we needed to clean up some of the big plays. If we get off the field on fourth down, some of those things don’t happen in the first place.”
The next opportunity is Saturday against an improved Vanderbilt team that already has matched last season’s win total (two) and has two losses by five combined points, including an overtime loss against No. 9 Missouri. There’s no shortage of motivational tactics to keep the team focused coming off a big win as mouse traps have been placed throughout the facility this week to indicate a trap game.
The challenge for Alabama’s defense will be slowing down Vanderbilt quarterback Diego Pavia, who has yet to turn the ball over and is a dual-threat option, which has hurt Alabama this season.
It’s a challenge Wommack welcomes and one he has missed during the past few seasons. He left South Alabama, where he was the most successful head coach in program history, to become Alabama’s defensive coordinator. Some of the reasons, such as exposure, are obvious but there was another: Wommack’s true calling, he believes, is building defenses and game-planning specifically for offenses.
“Calling plays and making adjustments on game day was something I really missed getting to do,” Wommack said. “It’s the thing that I’ve probably done the most of my career. I’ve known I wanted to be a coach my whole life. You get into it, and you realize I kind of have a knack for this or that. (Play calling) has always come a little bit more natural, so that’s something that I’m really excited to be able to do, use those gifts again.”
(Top photo of Zabien Brown (2): Todd Kirkland / Getty Images)
