From a bird eye view, Will Anderson was seen as a tenacious, relentless and ferocious football player accompanied by an expressive personality off the field at Alabama. But what was kept from the public at large was what Anderson was going through internally, especially during his last season with the Crimson Tide.
When speaking with Tyler Dunne of Go Long, Anderson detailed a tumultuous 2022 season at Alabama which included a decline in his production from a dominant 2021 campaign which left Anderson questioning his faith and even a battle with depression leaving him lost.
“My faith was very low — questioning God. Depressed. All those things,” Anderson said. “Now that I look back on it now, I wish I could do so many things differently.
“My last year at Alabama, I was just lost. I was lost.”
In 2022, Anderson’s sacks dropped from 17.5 the year before to 10, his tackles for loss going from 34.5 to 17 and saw his total tackles cut in half from 102 to 51 in his final season. Contributing to the decline in production was Anderson’s alignment on defense which was altered by new outside linebackers coach Coleman Hutzler who took over for veteran Sal Sunseri.
Anderson told Dunne he was shifted to the “4i” position where he lines up on the inside shoulder of the offensive tackle, taking away angles around the edge where he excelled just a year prior.
Although he didn’t go into major detail about his disagreements with Hutzler, Anderson made it clear stating: “We didn’t see eye to eye on a lot of things.” Even with Alabama finishing 11-2, and still being heralded as one of the best defensive players in the country, the pressure of the outside and internal expectations of himself wore Anderson down to the point where he was ready for what was next in his career.
“I wasn’t standing firm on who I was,” Anderson said. “I wasn’t standing firm on the foundation my parents had already built for me. I was letting that stuff feed into me. All that negativity. And it was just wearing me down, wearing me down, wearing down. I had to really suck it up and ‘Let’s just get through the season. Let’s just do what you need to do and get out of there.'”
Even with the decline on the stat sheet, Anderson’s draft stock ultimately wasn’t hurt as the Houston Texans aggressively moved up to select him with the No. 3 overall pick in the 2023 NFL Draft. Anderson would go on to find peace at the NFL level helping Houston make the playoffs and was named the league’s defensive rookie of the year.
https://x.com/TyDunne/status/1823454608091750662
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Patrick Dowd is a Reporter for Touchdown Alabama Magazine. You can follow him on Twitter, via Pat_Dowd77
