Less than a week before Alabama’s spring practice begins on Monday, new defensive coordinator Kane Wommack had an important meeting scheduled for Wednesday with Nick Saban.
The retiring Alabama coach returned to Tuscaloosa earlier this month and had his initial meeting with Wommack last week before the two met again this morning.
“I was promptly early,” Wommack told The Next Round. “I told my wife, it was like cramming for a final the night before, making sure all my cut-ups were ready to go for that meeting.”
Wommack, who left South Alabama’s head coaching position to join Kalen DeBoer’s staff at Alabama, will call defensive plays for the first time since 2020 at Indiana. Wommack is frequently associated with the 4-2-5 defensive strategy that his father, Dave, implemented at multiple schools, notably Arkansas and Ole Miss. But Kane Wommack stated Wednesday that his own defence has changed and is more similar to what Saban has recently used at Alabama.
“We are a little bit more of a 3-4 nickel defence,” that’s what he stated. “That’s exactly what Coach Saban has done in recent years, where they can switch between four-down and three-down formations. There is a lot of carryover, but I want to make sure that I minimise some of the things that our players will have to learn, so that I can understand their language as well.”
Saban’s base defence at Alabama was a 3-4, but modern offences frequently required five defensive backs on the field, therefore Alabama’s genuine alignment in recent seasons has been either a 3-3-5 or 4-2-5 nickel.
“There’s a tonne of carryover in what we do and what Coach Saban has done,” Wommack told ESPN.
