Everything Kane Wommack Said After Vanderbilt Win, Previewing Missouri

TUSCALOOSA, Ala.— Alabama football defensive coordinator Kane Wommack held a press conference on Monday morning to recap the No. 8 Crimson Tide's win over Vanderbilt, as well as preview the team's upcoming road game against No. 14 Missouri this weekend. A full transcript of Wommack's availability is below.

Opening Statement:

"When you look at the game last week, probably one of the things that I’m pleased with is our guys were able to overcome some early adversity. I thought our sideline did a really good job of staying locked in. I thought our players, Tim Keenan in particular, did a really good job on the sideline. Had a conversation with those players afterwards. I kind of brought them and talked to them about how we need to handle things and then right after Tim got them all together got them all together and said the right things at the right time. Great leadership is great messaging at the right time. I thought our players really responded well. Obviously, the rushing yards in the first quarter, we had some unacceptable situations. We had two errors. One was a misfit if you will, just not taking the air out of your gap and the other one was we didn’t have a defensive lineman that slanted properly and gave up two explosive runs. We’ve got to create more overlap in the defense in those situations... certainly a nice job the last three quarters from defending their run game. Starting the second half, going a four-and-out and a three-and-out, I think was huge. Kind of set the tone for the second half. And then only giving up three explosive plays to our thirteen explosives that we were able to create as well. Some of those things are good. We have got to start the game faster, on a more consistent level as a defense. Twice this season, we have not started games fast. When you play in the SEC, you cannot let other teams take the momentum early, and then you feel like you’re fighting your way back. Credit our guys and the way that they were able to fight, but certainly something that we do not want to build a consistent habit for. Those things have to get fixed. Good teams continue to get better as the season goes on and that will be the challenge to our guys as we face another good SEC opponent on the road. Missouri is doing a tremendous job right now, particularly on offense. They’ve got a very potent running game. They’ve got two running backs that are as good as anybody we’ve seen the last year and a half here. They break tackles. They’re physical. They can make you miss and then when they get in open space, they’ve both shown the ability to create explosive plays with their speed. So they present a number of challenges in that regard. I think their quarterback is operating at a very efficient level right now, completing over 75-percent of his passes. They do a great job of mixing in their run and pass game and they’re very complementary in their play-action game and make things look the same as well. So certainly, there’s a lot of great things that you see from their offense. It’ll be a great challenge for us. It’s a faster week, being an 11 a.m. kick. Some of those late games that you get on Saturday, you get an extra walk through, some of those things being on the road, the time to travel. So it’ll be a great challenge for our guys to turn the page to another great SEC opponent. Looking forward to the week ahead and having our players ready to go on Saturday."

On London Simmons and the Missouri run game:

"Yeah, I thought London continues to show up and does a good job. When you’re going in a game where you have some early adversity, like we talked about. You want to try to keep some older, more experienced players in the game and certainly when you look at rotations, there’s times where our offense did a really good job of staying on the field, we won the time of possession battle and so typically you’re just naturally going to have more of our starters in the game. So, Tim was doing a really good job in that situation. Sometimes you’re just not going to pull him out as much. But London, certainly, when you go back and look at the tape has earned the right to get more playing time and certainly this week, I would imagine you’re going to see more snaps from him. When you look at Missouri’s offensive line, I think they’ve got a great scheme. Drink [Eli Drinkwitz] has been running that outside zone scheme since he was at App State. Does a really good job with it. They are able to create seams in the run game through different variations of zone-scheme and they’ve got some gap schemes that are pretty good. They do a nice job and their backs, they break tackles. I mean, rarely does the first guy get either one of their first two backs down. So you’ve got to swarm to the ball. You’ve got to gang tackle. You’ve got to be physical. You’ve got to put screws on screws. We talk about surface area being a huge piece to efficient tackle. So if you tackle a big back with just your shoulder, and you don’t put surface effort, body on body, you’re rarely going to make the play. So those are things that we’ve got to do at a high level on Saturday."

On what stands out about Mizzou RB Ahmad Hardy:

“All the things I just said. I think he’s a fantastic back. I think he is very physical. I think he has great patience in the run game. Does a really nice job of making either the first guy miss or breaking the tackle. And then when he’s out in space, he can create the explosive play, which ultimately, any great run team, when they’re committed to running the football, it’s like body blows in a boxing match, right? Those body blows continue to hit, and then all of a sudden you create explosive plays, and that’s what they’ve been able to do efficiently up to this point in the season.”

On second-half adjustments:

“Especially early on in the season, you get a feel for what a team is trying to do. So, they’ve put a body of work on tape, but then specifically for you, for our team. How are they attacking us? Our staff has done a really good job, our players have done a really good job, really since the Florida State game, of taking the adjustments that we have made on the sideline and at halftime, and applying them to the next drive and the next series. If we continue to do that, we will make it hard for people as the game goes on to be an efficient offense. That’s something that we’re doing a really good job right now. I think the level of communication for our team, especially being in Year 2 as a defense, just the understanding of coaches is really seamless when we get in there at halftime, the adjustments. We’re very efficient with it right now. The communication to the players goes out through position coaches, and then I bring those guys all in and give them the overarching theme again, hit the high points of the things we need to make sure we defend so we can make people play left-handed. So whatever it is that they show, we are going to make sure that we take away those top one, two, three things in the game, and then see if they can beat us with option four, five six.”

On Justin Jefferson:

“I remember when, it was some time around maybe Thanksgiving or something like that when we found out that he was going to have the chance to be eligible. Maybe it was later than that, actually when I think about it. Maybe in December. That was a special moment. I remember calling Chuck Morrell at that time, and that was big because we were looking at linebackers out of the portal. In fact, I think it was December. But certainly we were all excited, and I got a chance to call him and let him know that he was going to get to come back for another year because you knew he was going to have great impact on our defense in this season. And certainly, Saturday was a great example of that. Justin has a great feel for instinctive tracking. He can track the ball really well, and then obviously, he’s a very physical player. He is a very fast player. He can create. He can take space away from ball carriers. We work creating takeaways every single practice at the beginning of practice, and you talk about textbook… you show exactly what he did in practice that week and exactly what showed up on game day of stripping that ball loose. Well, we do that over and over and over again, and it’s just so rewarding for those players to be able to show that, ‘hey, it showed up on game day in a very critical moment.’ So very proud of him, and the effort that he’s bringing, and the energy he’s bringing to our defense, and I think he’ll continue to build off those things.”

On challenge of defending shovel pass:

"It's a really challenging concept. We got hit on it last year against Vanderbilt, showed up in a couple of different games last year as well. Florida State tried it against us and we were able to knock it out in that situation. Some of it is there are certain calls that are good, better against the shovel, and some that aren't. It's a challenge because when you get teams that run shovel plays on third down, you almost have a decision to make with your defensive ends. Are you just going to play on the line of scrimmage and not try to affect the quarterback? Or are you gonna do certain things to try to create some overlap? One of the plays we had a chance to be able to defend it better than what we did. One of the other plays I thought I made a really tough call for our guys in that situation. It's a play, I've told you guys this before, whatever you put on tape you're going to have to answer for, right? That's a play we're going to have to continue to answer for. We work it probably more than we should, so it's disappointing that we gave two of them up. But at the same time, you kind of have to ask what are you willing to live with a little bit? I'm not saying we're going to give up shovels the rest of the season and I'm OK with that. I don't want our fans hearing that. But what I do want people to understand is you have to affect the quarterback and our ability to affect Diego Pavia was what won us the football game. Sometimes, right, you're gonna have those situations where their counter punch to that was a shovel pass every now and then. We gotta do a better job defending it, but certainly there's going to be times where you make sure you keep the main thing the main thing, which is affecting the quarterback in the passing game."

On what carries over from defending run against Vanderbilt to Missouri:

"I think anytime you defend one-plus quarterback, option-style systems where the quarterback has a chance to run the ball, there's an element of discipline, right, that you have to play with across the board. I think our guys took some of the mistakes from the first quarter and applied it to the last three quarters of the game from a run game standpoint. There were some schematic adjustments that we made, that gave us a chance. We were a lot more disruptive in the run game as well. Those are some things that you want to create some overlap of the defense and you want to let our guys go play really fast. I didn't think at the beginning of the Vanderbilt game as much as we stressed playing physical, playing fast, not playing on our heels, we still that first drive of the game -- I did not think we were playing very aggressive. I did not think we were playing very fast. I told our coaches, in those situations, put the iPads down, take your headset off and let's make sure we get our guys playing really fast and physical. That was - even Tim Keenan was an example of that. When you look at the run game, a lot of it is the physicality that you have to play with. That's one thing I want to make sure we keep on the forefront of our players' minds. We will make adjustments, we will have game plans going into each week and what each opponent in the SEC gives us. But at the end of the day, the physicality and violence we were able to play with is the reason why we were able to knock out the run Saturday. That has to continue."

On Keon Sabb and Deontae Lawson returning from injuries:

"I think you look at both those guys, they're continuing to take steps in the right direction. There is an element to, I said it a second ago, good teams get better, good football teams get better as the season goes on. Certainly when you're coming off an injury, there is a certain level of adjustment period, right, getting back into the swing of things. Keon is playing at a faster level week in and week out. Deontae, all the communication pieces -- sometimes he doesn't make the play necessarily so it doesn't show up to you, but for our defense, structurally, all the things that he does from a communication standpoint, anticipation, alignments, and getting our guys in position to go execute, I think he's doing that at a really high level right now. I'm excited about those two guys, I'm excited about a number of guys in our defense, but whoever continues to take steps forward will be the ones that stand on top of the moment at the end, right? Those are the teams that ultimately put in the work the week of preparation and practice so that they can show up on Saturday. That's certainly what we got to do getting ready to go to Columbia, Missouri on Saturday."