Kane Wommack reveals why Alabama continues to struggle against mobile quarterbacks and strong perimeter run games
Wommack’s answer may or may not appease fans, but on Monday, he revealed why Alabama continues to struggle against mobile quarterbacks and perimeter run games.
The Alabama Crimson Tide was left with more questions than answers following a brutal 31-17 road loss to Florida State in the season opener despite being a 13.5-point favorite going in. One of those questions continues to surround mobile quarterbacks and strong perimeter run games where Alabama’s has struggled since the arrival of Kane Wommack to take over the defense for a retired Nick Saban.
On Saturday afternoon, the Crimson Tide gave up 230 rushing yards to the Seminoles with 177 (or 77%) coming from the quarterback or outside of the tackle. Whether it was quarterback (on designed or unscripted runs), jet sweeps, end arounds or simply off-tackle plays, Alabama’s defense struggled to stop — or even slow down — the run.
During a Monday press conference for Wommack, Ryan Grubb and Kalen DeBoer, Wommack was asked about Alabama’s inability to consistently slow down perimeter run games or quarterbacks who can create on the ground. His answer was interesting.
“Ours was, they were leveraging issues in terms of our guys being decisive and getting off of blocks,” Wommack told reporters. “I thought we were timid in getting off of blocks. So we allowed people to get the edge on us too often. I thought our block destruction has been something we have really emphasized and done a good job in the offseason. That wasn’t really the standard. Really excited to get that fixed this week.”
Obviously, Florida State offensive coordinator Gus Malzahn is plenty familiar with Alabama, and he’s also an innovate offensive this. Saturday marked the first time he’s exclusively been a play-caller without head coaching responsibilities since he was under Gene Chizik at Auburn from 2009-11, and that included a national championship in 2010.
Malzahn had some things dialed up for Alabama’s defense, but according to Wommack, there wasn’t anything that the Tide wasn’t expecting, even with some of the trick plays. I guess that’s a good thing, but it didn’t exactly translate to a successful defensive performance. In fact, quite the opposite. Wommack did acknowledge that there’s a pattern of mobile quarterbacks creating massive issues in the run game.
“Yeah, I think there’s a pattern right now of when teams are moving laterally in the plus-one quarterback system,” Wommack said. “We saw it against Vanderbilt last year, we saw it in the first half against Oklahoma and then it showed up this week. I thought those are things that you have to look at. We had a good week of preparation, but we weren’t able to execute well enough on game day, so schematically what do I need to do to make sure I give our players the best chance to be successful based upon the body of work that we’ve put on the field. So we’re looking to address those issues.”
I understand how the plus-one quarterback system, especially when it’s constantly straining you laterally, can cause timid-ness on defense. But with that said, I also think there are things schematically that are causing issues. For example, mugging the linebackers (putting them on the line like they’re going to blitz) up on the line of scrimmage. When you do that and then they drop out into coverage, their first steps are backwards rather than moving forward. It’s difficult to implement a downhill, head-hunting mentality moving backwards.
At this point, there’s a lot that needs to be fixed.
