Everything Kane Wommack said after Alabama's 12th preseason practice

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. – Alabama held its 12th preseason practice on Wednesday morning, and after the August 13 workout, defensive coordinator Kane Wommack spoke to reporters inside the Hank Crisp Indoor Practice Facility. Below is everything Wommack said after Practice 12.

Wommack’s opening statement…

“Less exciting news from me than with Grubb. Deontae Lawson is our starting Mike linebacker. Shocker.”

Wommack on how Deontae Lawson is doing…

“He’s actually doing a great job. Deontae, it’s amazing. I thought he carried himself at such a professional level a year ago. His leadership was so impressive. Somehow, he’s taken his game and leadership to another level, which is really impressive coming off of not only battling the recovery process, but that he’s kind of stayed ahead of every marker that we’ve had for him. To be able to come out in fall camp, and we thought maybe we would limit some of his loads and all that. We’ve really pushed him and he’s handled it really well.”

Wommack on if counts practice interceptions the same way as Ryan Grubb…

“I suppose. I don’t know what the exact number is out there, but I think our offense is doing a fantastic job of taking care of the football. It was an emphasis coming out of last season that we had to do a better job as a team taking care of the football and creating takeaways. Certainly, we were able to do that a year ago. They’re making it more difficult on us. When the bullets are flying, and it’s live, and you can affect a quarterback, that’s always the indication of how we’ll do. So, I feel good about where we are defensively.”

Wommack on his assessment of Alabama’s run fits…

“I think overall, have been really solid, really positive, and I think the different variations of run game that we’re gonna see throughout the season, I think we have spent an obscene amount of time making sure the different variations of run game that we’re ready for and geared up for. That we have answers to those things as well. In the scrimmage at the beginning there, we had a misfit that turned into two missed tackles, which is uncharacteristic of us. We were fortunate enough to be able to get a stop there in the goal line, which is great but never really should’ve happened in the first place if we’re operating efficiently in the run game. So, those are things that we’ve just gotta continue to harp on and work and that same call that we have ran this week, our guys have done a really nice job on. That’s what you wanna see.”

Wommack on Alabama’s Wolf competition behind Qua Russaw…

“I think it’s a group of guys that are all, I mean, they’re all competing against each other, but they also have a great camaraderie. C-Rob does a really good job with that room. Kind of a three or four musketeers, right, all-for-one kind of deal. One for all. They do a really good job of supporting each other. Those guys, you can rotate them in. I think they’re all improving in the pass game from a standpoint of generating some pass rush, but excited about those guys taking the next step in that regard. That’s gonna be critical to us being able to affect the quarterback more consistently than we did a year ago.”

Wommack on players who changed his perception since the start of camp…

“Off the top of my head, DaShawn Jones was a little bit banged up in the springtime. He’s taken some great strides. Jordan Renaud just continues to grow and improve. Really, really pleased with him. And then some of those young defensive linemen are really taking steps in the right direction. Both Freddie Roach and Jamey Mosley, those guys have done a good job. Isaia Faga is doing a really good job. You’re seeing some things from, London Simmons is improving. Steve (Mboumoua) is improving. So, it’s nice to see some guys that maybe you thought might be a little ways away that might have a role for us at some point here during the season. That’s encouraging.”

Wommack on Ty Simpson…

“I mean, as a defensive coordinator, your job is to kind of be an expert on offenses and what we’re doing and how they’re attacking us. Ty just does such a great job of his command of the offense right now. He understands what Ryan and what Nick are trying to get done out of the quarterback position and what we’re trying to do offensively. He gets us into the right calls. He keeps us out of bad calls for the most part and then does a really nice job of taking care of the football, and the dude makes plays. So take care of the football, make good decisions, make plays when it matters. To me, that’s the elements of a quarterback. When I watch him go through progressions, he has a great feel for boom, boom, boom and he stays on schedule and that’s always going to make you efficient offensively.”

Wommack on if it’s clear Simpson has been around a while… 

“I would think him, probably a number of guys on our football team, you can see the value of them in year two. So, offensively, defensively, certainly at the quarterback position, how comfortable they are in the system, you see a difference from where we were a year ago.”

Wommack on Zabien Brown…

“That’s a great question, because ZB was a guy that came in as a freshman and he made certain freshman mistakes, but he handled them like a veteran, right? And so it was really impressive to see the way that he would make a mistake and then get it fixed and you wouldn’t see that mistake. He was able to sustain the correction as we talk about on defense. This year, he’s now playing with anticipation, so he’s making plays on the ball. He understands route progressions. He understands how to take certain things away and then go drive the ball in other places. He’s probably one of the most fun people I’ve ever coached, from a standpoint of just how locked in, how detailed, how professional he is every day. That dude in my mind will play this game for a long time.”

Wommack on what he remembers about Simpson when he was at UT Martin…

“I remember at five years old, I said this dude will be the starting quarterback at Alabama at one point. That was a real fun experience for me. My first two years, I was an offensive line GA for Chris Kapilovic and then went as a quarterbacks coach for Jason Simpson, and really, I was more like the assistant quarterback coach, because Jason ran the quarterback room and was the offensive coordinator as the head coach and so I learned so much from him. Ty just always had a ball in his hand, right? Just always was around the team. Jason did a great job of involving his family around. The year I was there, Graham, their youngest, who’s named after Graham Stadium there was born and so Jason and Julie were really good to Melissa and I.”

Wommack on Cam Calhoun…

“Cam’s got a really versatile skillset, so I mean he’s doing some things corner-wise. He’s doing some things at the Husky/nickel position. Cam’s got, I think I mentioned this before, he plays the game with great energy. You’ve got to have guys like that. We’re relatively quiet in the secondary for the most part, but I think there’s a number of guys, at least a year ago we were, I think there’s a number of guys that bring a little bit of swagger, and sometimes you need that, which is really good. He’s certainly one that brings juice and energy every day.”

Wommack on where he’s grown as a defensive coordinator…

“I understand our players much better, and I understand the league a lot better, right? I think probably the biggest thing is you go into the offseason knowing that answers – not the answers to the test, right, but you at least have the study guide, you know what I mean, a little bit better than you did in Year 1. And so, having anticipation for what we’re going to see, having an understanding of what our players do well and how to feature those players has allowed me to be really aggressive in our install in Year 2. So spring ball, we were like that. And then certainly in fall camp, I mean, we have just layered on layered on layered the scheme for them, and they’re doing a good job of handling it.”

Wommack on what he’s seen from Alabama’s three freshman inside linebackers…

“Swimming, struggling. I mean, in a good way. I mean, if you’re going to do this at a high level from a linebacker standpoint, you have to embrace the hard times, right? There’s just so much we ask those guys to do in terms of running the defense. And so they have to kind of go and press through these things, and it’s going to be two steps forward, one step back, and then it’s going to be one step forward and two steps back for a little while.

“I told those guys this morning, they just have to keep pushing. And the guys that I think – I’ve seen a lot of linebackers go through and then play at a very high level. The ones that just know they’re going to play each snap like it’s the most important play and just focus on each snap. You do it over and over again, and all of a sudden, it just clicks. But it hadn’t clicked yet, so they’re grinding right now.”

Wommack on Duke Johnson’s focusing on defense after playing both ways in high school…

“I mean, like I said, those guys have a lot of responsibility within the defense. But at the same time, positionally, he’s very inexperienced as a linebacker. So there’s a transition that that takes. We had a guy at Indiana, Cam Jones, who’s playing for the Chiefs right now. Cam came in, didn’t really have any experience as a linebacker, and that was a process. And then he turned himself into an all-conference player and then got drafted and so on and so forth, right? So that process of taking an athlete and developing them into a linebacker is something that we’ve always taken pride in in our system, of being able to evaluate guys and then project and then develop them. But it most certainly is a process that he’s going through.”

Wommack on if versatile players become more of a plus with harder roster limits…

“Position versatility is critical, and it always has been. But I would say when the numbers go down, those things are always going to matter. You look at the NFL, those guys that are the twos or one-and-a-halves, or whatever you want to say, their ability to play multiple positions is critical, as well. We believe in putting athletes on the field. So athletic people that can make plays in space can do multiple things for you, and so we’re going to recruit to that. If there’s been an indicator of what we do right now from a – long people that can make space tackles, that is the mold of what we’re looking for in the recruiting area, and I think we’re doing that right now at, I would argue, a pretty high level.”

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