The Booms and Busts of Alabama's Defense Against LSU

Alabama's defense allowed 13 points on Saturday.

That is the most important sentence in this article. The Crimson Tide held LSU to 13 points and set the offense up to win the game. That's it. We're done here.

If only it were that easy. The Crimson Tide also allowed 457 yards of offense and missed 17 tackles. It was heavily reliant on massive plays to ensure that the scoreboard didn't match the performance.

Alabama's defense has earned the "boom or bust" label through nine games. The booms have been incredible, defensive touchdowns left and right, dominance up front, and a unit that has looked like one of the best in the nation. The busts have been equally as significant — notably, Dijon Lee's second-half collapse and game-sealing penalty against Georgia and the nine-and-a-half-minute fourth-quarter drive Tennessee put together to ice the win over the Crimson Tide.

In Baton Rouge, the booms were the bigger story. A couple of crucial sacks, four (!) fourth-down stops, and a key interception. The busts were also there, and we'll get into both in this week's film review.

Opening Drive

LSU's first drive was a microcosm of the entire game. The first missed tackle of the day belonged to Zabien Brown, who got shaken out of his shoes by star receiver Jackson Harris.

As a game-time decision, Brown was almost certainly not playing this game at 100% (reinforced by his leaving midway through). The junior hadn't been responsible for many errors in the defensive backfield this season before this play.

The Tigers' athleticism was apparent from the jump. Kedrick Bingley-Jones couldn't finish this second-down tackle, allowing running back Dilin Jones to moves the chains and set up first-and-goal.

There's the bad, and here's the good: a defense that was able to hold strong and force a field goal.

Leavitt nearly made something happen on third down after shaking off the sack. Alabama continuously left the door open to big plays. Many times this season, it has come back to bite them. This time, it did not.

Swarm D

The second quarter featured some brilliant moments from Kane Wommack's unit. This tackle of Trey'Dez Green was one of the biggest plays of the game.

Red Morgan grabs him immediately, and Caleb Woodson is there to bring him down within a second, with multiple others closing in. This was a play that Morgan told me "exactly explains the identity" of Wommack's "Swarm D" after the game. It was also a play that would lead to a missed 56-yard field goal on the next snap.

This kick could have very well been good from 50, 52, or even 54 yards. Alabama directly saves three points with this tackle. There will be more on Green later in this piece, as the Crimson Tide largely did a good job on the 6-foot-7, 237-pounder.

Chuck McDonald Continues to Impress

We now move into what I am officially calling "The Chuck McDonald Series." Watch the sophomore (#19) throughout this play.

First of all, this is a great blitz from McDonald, and left tackle Jordan Seaton gets away with a hold on him.

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Jordan Seaton gets away with a hold | ABC

The blitz leaves McDonald out of the play... until he's right there hawking down Leavitt. Look at where Leavitt is in relation to the other defenders in this frame. He made a nice move on Woodson at the 0:20 mark, and had more yardage here, possibly a touchdown.

McDonald made sure that didn't happen, and he also blew up LSU's fourth-down attempt to get Alabama off the field two plays later.

Reps are incredibly hard to come by in this deep secondary, regardless of how it may have underperformed this year. McDonald has taken advantage of every single opportunity he's gotten this season, and continues to show that he should be viewed as a key piece of Alabama's 2027 defense.

Welcome Back, Devan Thompkins

The defense had a chance to set Keelon Russell & Co. up with a two-minute drill to extend the lead before halftime. If Carmelo O'Neal makes this tackle, LSU is buried in third-and-long and likely punting.

The conversion puts the Tigers in field-goal range, and Lane Kiffin wants seven. But, after a five-game stretch without a tackle for a loss, Devan Thompkins finally breaks through, sacking Leavitt for a nine-yard loss.

It's easy to see why Thompkins' draft stock has continued to rise, even amidst a run of underwhelming production. A player capable of doing that to an SEC tackle figures to translate well at the next level.

Thompkins was far from done. He got pressure on Leavitt on the very next play, helping to force this ball right into the arms of Luke Metz, who reads it beautifully.

Winning the turnover battle was always going to prove crucial in this game. Whether the defense was going to be able to come up with a game-changing takeaway was a massive question entering the contest, and Metz's answer ensured the Crimson Tide entered halftime with the lead.

The second half was largely more of the same. Dijon Lee got burned by Harris for an explosive, O'Neal kept a drive alive with a fourth-down pass interference, and LSU continued to be the beneficiary of missed Crimson Tide tackles. And it didn't matter.

These three second-half fourth-down stops defined the game.

These plays represent the absolute best of Alabama's defense. They are also a payoff on the investments made into the unit and the identity Wommak has worked to build.

The first two plays are made by two of the most impactful offseason additions, Woodson, who tipped the first pass at the line, and Thompkins. Thompkins was a game-wrecker all day for Alabama, and that final sack allowed the Crimson Tide to take a three-score lead and effectively ice the game.

Swarm D stopped one of the most dynamic players in the nation on the third. Green could have run wild in this game. Instead, he was reduced to some occasional free yardage and the least impactful 85-yard game he'll likely ever have.

Wommack's unit will bend. It will give up yardage. It will commit penalties and miss tackles. That is an undeniable takeaway built upon nine games of evidence. The defense is flawed.

But when it mattered in Death Valley, Alabama delivered. What more can you really ask for?

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