Tenacious. Violent, Relentless. This is Kane Wommack's defensive mentality for Alabama football . It's a call to "swarm," to pursue, to take the ball away, to provide momentum.
"(It's a) frenzy of piranhas," Alabama safety Keon Sabb said.
It's a much different defense than what the Crimson Tide is used to, one that is more reactionary than the man-to-man match-coverage approach made famous in the Nick Saban years.
But it's exactly the kind of mentality Kalen DeBoer wanted to start his era as the head coach at Alabama, seeing the potential in Wommack's scheme and tenacity as early as their shared season at Indiana in 2019.
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"There's a reason why I wanted Kane to be here," DeBoer said.
How does Kane Wommack describe his "swarm" defense? It's how Alabama approached its defensive game plan against Georgia quarterback Carson Beck in the Crimson Tide's 41-34 win against the Bulldogs.
"We're going to show disguise," Wommack said. "We're going to give him one pre-snap picture and then we're going to give him a different picture post snap. Sometimes, we're going to give him an immediate post-snap picture and then switch that picture mid play."
Disguise paired with pressure, Wommack said, kept Beck "uncomfortable" and "off-kilter," forcing multiple interceptions and disrupting his timing with receivers early before the Georgia offense settled in during the second half.
Once an offensive play starts, Wommack turns to his "vision-style" zone coverage scheme where the Crimson Tide traditionally rushes three or four up front while the five defensive backs and two or three linebackers drop and read where the quarterback wants to go, and swarm to the football.
"When you can put your eyes on the quarterback now you are not just defending people or grass, but defending the people on the grass the quarterback wants to throw the ball to," Wommack said.
It's a defense filled with opportunity, a "way of just making people earn it," DeBoer said, while making it "kind of look the same from play to play."
This is the kind of defense linebacker Deontae Lawson likes to be a part of.
"Being a linebacker for this defense, I think it's just a defense for me to make plays," Lawson said.
When describing Wommack's "swarm" defense, safety Malachi Moore's first descriptor was "taker," something the Crimson Tide prides itself on: making plays on the ball, moving around, playing freely and simply playing football.
For freshman cornerback Zabien Brown , the mentality is in the name itself.
"You swarm around the ball," Brown said. "You make plays."
Wommack's defense is not his own.
It's the defense his father Dave Wommack began to run at Ole Miss in 2014 — inspired by Monte Kiffin, who was a defensive coordinator for multiple NFL teams and college programs. It's the defense he saw the Seattle Seahawks run in the "Legion of Boom" era where "they were taking the ball off of people more than anyone else."
"( Ole Miss ) became the number one scoring defense in the country, number one in the country in interceptions," Kane Wommack said. "And we've never looked back at the element of putting vision on the quarterback and a number of different concepts defensively be it zone or even man it has been an opportunity to make more plays on the ball."
With DeBoer at Indiana in 2019, Wommack led the ninth-best scoring defense and total defense in the Big Ten, allowing 24.4 points and 352.5 total yards per game. In 2020, his Indiana defense led the country in interceptions, averaging more than two per game.
That ball-hawk reputation carried over to South Alabama where his defenses averaged more than an interception per game between 2021-23 along with an average of more than six tackles-for-loss per game in his final two seasons before becoming Alabama's defensive coordinator.
That play-making expectation came with Wommack to Tuscaloosa, leading a defense that averages multiple turnovers per game in addition to numerous "takeaway opportunities."
It's Alabama's calling card under Wommack, to be tenacious violent, relentless.
To be what Sabb calls a "frenzy of piranhas."
"When we don't do that, we're upset with ourselves because we know the standard we hold ourselves to and the standard that's set here at Alabama," Moore said.
"We're trying to be the best defense that comes through there."
Colin Gay covers Alabama football for The Tuscaloosa News, part of the USA TODAY Network. Reach him at cgay@gannett.com or follow him @_ColinGay on X, formerly known as Twitter.
This article originally appeared on The Tuscaloosa News: What makes Kane Wommack's Alabama football 'swarm' defense
