Kane Wommack describes three areas the Alabama defense has improved

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — Two Saturdays ago, Alabama put its best defensive performance on the field with a 34-0 shutout of Missouri. The Crimson Tide defense had been making steady improvements since some major struggles in early October, coming just before a bye week.

Now, Alabama has a huge task in front of it in the form of No. 14 LSU. Coming out of the bye week, defensive coordinator Kane Wommack believes there are three main areas that the Alabama defense has taken a notable step forward in.

“Looking back on the bye week, you always want to do a review of where you are, the things you need to improve and the things you’re doing well. Coming out of the Missouri game there were things that show we’re taking steps in the right direction,” Wommack said. “I think our players have a real emphasis to take the ball off of people right now. I think we’ve gotten 10 takeaways in the last three games, which is really encouraging. I’m seeing an emphasis on that from our coaches and players in practice, and those things are showing up on game day.”

Creating more takeaways has been a consistent talking point of Wommack’s since the first weekend of the season. He constantly he says he wants this defense’s identity to be in their ability to take the ball away, and the rate of those takeaways has increased tremendously of late.

Alabama turned Missouri over three times in the shutout win a few weeks ago. The Crimson Tide has totaled 10 takeaways over the last three games, including three against Tennessee and four against South Carolina. If that trend continues against LSU, Alabama will have an excellent chance of leaving Death Valley with a win.

Wommack continued, explaining the next area he’s seen improvement.

Limiting explosive plays, certainly we were able to do that,” Wommack said. “We Gave up four explosives, and really, three of those four were in the last series of the game when we had some young guys in who gave up some explosive runs, so we certainly have got to get those things cleaned up. That was not nearly to the standard. We were fortunate to get a fourth-down stop there at the end with some older guys who have a lot of pride and wanted to get back in the game.”

Any good defense is able to limit the number of times an opponent creates explosive plays against them, and that was undoubtedly true of the Crimson Tide against Missouri. Even in the loss to Tennessee, explosive plays were fairly limited, though the Vols were able to make a few at the end of the game that ended up being the difference.

The final area Wommack spoke of improvement comes in the area the defense struggled the most early in the year: getting off the field on third downs.

“Third downs, that’s been an area where we’ve been deficient in,” Wommack said. “I think we’re taking steps in the right direction there, some things we’re doing fundamentally, some things we’re doing schematically, just making tweaks so we can give our players the best chance to get people off the field and give the ball back to our offense. Looking into the bye week, those were things we were able to do and kind of build off of from a momentum standpoint.”

Getting off the field on third down was a seemingly impossible task for this team once the meat of the schedule arrived. The second half against Georgia was where it began, and it showed the most in the loss to Vanderbilt, where the Commodores where able to do whatever they wanted.

But, like these other areas, the third down defense has also shown an uptick in efficiency. The Missouri game was perhaps the most notable sign of improvement, as Alabama held the Tigers to just 3-of-13 conversions on third down for the game.

If the improvement in these three areas carries over into the LSU game and into the rest of the season, the Crimson Tide will still have a great chance to accomplish its lofty goals for the year. Having noted these steps in the right direction, Wommack likes where his unit stands.

“I like the demeanor of our players right now,” Wommack said. “I think they’re in a really good position. I think they’re very hungry to get back out on the field”