Alabama defensive coordinator Kane Wommack confirms what most fans thought happened against Florida State, then shares how the Tide plans to fix it
Alabama defensive coordinator Kane Wommack confirmed what fans thought happened against Florida State, but also shared what needs to be done to fix it.
The Alabama Crimson Tide has seemingly bounced back following a rocky start to the 2025 college football season. After a brutal road loss to Florida State in the season opener, head coach Kalen DeBoer and company have won back-to-back games with a combined score of 111 to 14. Of those 14 allowed points, only seven of them were on the defense.
What’s the point of bringing that up?
Well, Alabama defensive coordinator Kane Wommack has seen his team make strides over the last two weeks, but that improvement isn’t enough for most Crimson Tide fans to forgive the performance they witnessed back in Week 1. On Monday, Wommack met with the media before speaking at the 68 Ventures Bowl 1st and 10 Club in Mobile, and one question he was asked centered around the improvement he’s seen from the defense.
Kane Wommack on Alabama’s defense
“I thought we let the first game, we thought we let early adversity put us on our heels,” Wommack told reporters, according to AL.com. “And I thought we played timid as a defense, and that’s something that’s highly disappointing, but we’ve got to own it. And it is where it is, and I think everyone in the building has done a really good job of kind of taking ownership of what we’ve got to do moving forward.”
One thing you never want to hear from a defensive coordinator is that his defense played timid, but there’s no other way to describe how things looked or went in the season opener. It was clear early on that Florida State was taking the fight to Alabama, and the players didn’t respond to it in a positive way.
That’s on everyone involved, from the players to the coaches, but it is encouraging to hear about the accountability from everyone involved. Once it’s happened, that’s about all you could ask for from anyone. Accept that it happened, learn from it and never let it happen again. According to Wommack, that’s been the approach.
“I think we’ve played very aggressive the last two games,” Wommack continued. “I think we’ve played with a high level of energy that we’ve brought from our sideline that translates out onto the field. I think we’ve let our players, kind of put them in a position to go be aggressive and attack the ball, and those things seem to be working.
“You look at the landscape of college football right now across the board, it’s an execution game and it’s a play-hard game and it’s tackling in space. And if you do that, you’re going to have a good day. And if you don’t do that, you look at some of the scores in the SEC. We had an 11 o’clock kick, and it was kind of the first time I really got a chance to start watching other teams and other defenses.
“Right now, everybody’s got the same issues. I mean, you’ve got to make space tackles and you’ve got to execute on third down and you’ve got to find ways to affect the quarterback. And I think everybody’s trying to find themselves because every team has warts and they’ve got young players that are going to be out there on the field representing your team. And you’ve got to find a way to get them ready in the early part of the season.”
That’s a fair point. Just look at some of the top teams from the SEC. Georgia and Tennessee scored 44 and 41 points, respectively, while racking up right at 500 yards of total offense apiece. South Carolina, at home, allowed Vanderbilt to score 31 points. Texas A&M gave up 440 yards and 40 points to Notre Dame. Arkansas scored 35 points while racking up 526 yards on Ole Miss. That was just this past weekend, too.
With that being said, Alabama has to continue its recent approach. No, I’m not saying the Crimson Tide’s defense needs to hold SEC opponents such as Georgia to 150-200 yards of offense and 0-7 points like it did against Louisiana-Monroe and Wisconsin. That’s completely unrealistic. Instead, I’m talking about the way Alabama approached those games with energy and passion where you saw defenders consistently flying around.
Intensity must be a non-negotiable.
