Everything Kane Wommack Said After Missouri Win, Previewing Tennessee

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — Alabama defensive coordinator Kane Wommack spoke to the media Monday afternoon to recap the Crimson Tide's win over Missouri and look ahead to the rivalry matchup with No. 11 Tennessee coming to Tuscaloosa this weekend.

Here's everything he had to say:

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Opening Statement:

"When you look back on last week, I do think there is a lot of fight in our players right now that we have developed and very proud of our guys in that, if you think about from where we've come a year ago, where we came in the first came of the season. I think there's certainly a lot of fight that our team has and it's helping us.

"It's helping us on the road. It's helping us respond to adversity at home. Those are things that we've got to continue to build upon. One thing that I do think we've got to continue to grow is going from a team that knows how to fight back and finding ways to put teams away. That's something that I thought we left opportunities as a football team on the field Saturday in Columbia, and those are things that we need to continue to work and get corrected.

"The exciting thing is, I think our best football is still ahead of us as a team, as a defense. Certainly, there were some opportunities that we left out on the field. You look at the beginning of the game, truly unacceptable start. Eyes not being in the right place, fundamentally not being locked in, and those are things that we've got to do a better job as players and coaches of preparing to play each snap like it's the most important play of the game from a fundamental standpoint and from an eye progression standpoint. Doing your job over and over again is really the mark of a great defense.

"And if you look at the landscape of college football right now, there's plenty of mistakes out there. There's plenty of eye violations and poor fundamentals and all those things that you got to be able to essentially do your job at a very high level, and that's something that I think we're taking steps towards, but certainly we left a number of things out there on the table. Third downs, we were certainly improving as a third-down defense. I think some of our pass rush is improving in terms of finding ways to speed up the timing of the quarterback.

"I do think we were able to affect the quarterback last week and certainly that helped in certain pass rushes and pressures and then, we had five opportunities to create takeaways. We only came away with two of them. So that's something that we've got to do a better job. Love that we're creating the opportunities, but something that we can be way more consistent and find ways to take the ball off of people.

"So when you look at this week, obviously another great rival, great opponent in the SEC. This is a football team that's operating at a pretty high level offensively right now. I think they're number one scoring offense in the country. That seems to be a theme of offenses that we face recently. I have tremendous respect for this coaching staff. Their players are very disciplined. A physical football team. Created a lot of explosives downfield. They're committed to it schematically. And they have shown that they can respond to adversity. So we certainly have a great challenge ahead of us, and one that I think we're all excited to get started on our week of preparation."

Why Did Dijon Lee Play More Snaps Than Domani Jackson?

"We talk about it all the time, right, a body of work and you have to answer for the things that we put on tape and we just felt like what Dijon was doing in the game and as the game was going on, he was operating at a very efficient level and doing his job at an efficient level. What you do in practice and what you do in games ultimately determines the amount of playing time moving forward, and so Dijon's certainly on a very good trajectory right now."

Will You Have Dijon Lee Cover Tennessee Wide Receiver Chris Brazzell?

"You can do some of those things for sure, but when they're going fast, it's hard sometimes to just say, hey, we're gonna go trade and match corners over all the time. Those are things that, we have done that in the past.

"Those are things that you can do. Some of it is based upon what type of coverage you're wanting to play. Some of it is situational based. It's not like we have one 6-4 guy and we have all 5-9 DBs other than that, right? Zabien Brown is 6'2", you know what I mean?

"We've got guys that are long, athletic, so we do feel like we can challenge the receiving corps but certainly, we'll look at whatever matchups we can have. So you stop by my office afterwards with any other ideas."

On what he wants to see from Domani Jackson...

"Building consistency in your game. Domani has done great things here and played good football. But doing it at a very consistent level, play in and play out, and doing your job is what we're all measured by. I've told you guys this before, you are accountable for what you put on tape and you have to answer for those things.

"Myself as a coordinator, schematically, the way our guys play, effort, finish, they're accountable for those things. Our players doing their job, when we put you in position to go make plays you have to do those things at a consistent level. Not just Domani, a number of players have to continue to improve if we want to get to where we want to go at the end of the season."

On Dijon Lee's interception...

"That was a zone-style coverage, a vision-based coverage that we ran. We tried to mix man and zone against them, we tried to mix some pressure against them as well. Their quarterback did a decent job of getting the ball out. He converted that 4th-and-8 against us, converted another third down against us early when we had brought some pressure. We felt like if we could pressure him enough we could speed up his tempo.

"We showed a little bit of a look that we might be pressuring there, and then got to a position where we affected him enough that he tried to force a ball that — they'd tried to go to that concept earlier in the game. He was looking for it, didn't have it, came back to it again. He probably forced the throw a little bit, but our guys did a really nice job, our underneath zone defenders are doing a really good job of taking what we call some of the sight line of the quarterback and forcing him to put air on the ball and that's exactly what happened.

"We say all the time, tips and overthrows, you've got to get those. So that's an overthrow, and we came up with it."

What to work on in practice to put the game away...

"Well, we talked about this as a staff. It's easy to sit there and say we've got to start faster or finish better. It really comes down to playing each snap with great eye progression, great fundamentals, and just doing that over, and over, and over again. For us as a defense, the areas where we have given up plays, it's been that we are not doing our job at a high enough level.

"Certainly there's been some things schematically every now and then that, 'I've got to have a better answer for that,' for sure. But most of our issues are things that we can correct and we can fix, and that's a good thing. From our perspective, when you look at how we need to finish, we need to do the same high-level job that we have shown throughout games, more consistently. That's gonna be football from here to eternity, right?

"There's never been a perfect defensive game, but we can strive for that. And we can certainly do better than what we're doing right now. I think our best football is ahead of us, and it's our job as a coaching staff and as players to push ourselves and find a way to continually get better in SEC play."

On Keon Keeley...

"I know our fans have been waiting on that, waiting on him to take steps and excited for him. We've been continually working. I've talked about him in the offseason, that he's taken steps in the right direction. Certainly he didn't have the role that probably he would want at the beginning of the season, but he's continually taking steps in the right direction.

"He has a role for us now, and he took advantage of that role on Saturday. I thought he did a really nice job in some different pass rush scenarios. He's getting better at his down-in and down-out play. Consistency, doing his job at the same high level. You're gonna hear me talk about that for probably the rest of the season, it's just about doing your job fundamentally at a high level over and over again.

"He's doing that more consistently, and so he get rewarded with reps, and he took advantage of those reps and produced for us on gameday. Excited for him as I am a number of guys within our defense."

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