Why Wommack is confident in the Alabama defense ahead of potential trap game vs. South Carolina

Photo By Cedric Mason - Touchdown Alabama

Last season, Alabama football suffered losses to two unranked conference opponents after defeating highly ranked SEC programs, but this year’s Crimson Tide team is more comfortable with their approach to the “trap games” that are on the schedule.

Entering the season, the belief was that Missouri would be the game that trips up Alabama, but that did not happen. The Crimson Tide have handled business against every team they have played at home so far and won a few close games on the road, but the next team on the schedule is an unranked South Carolina team with a 3-4 record.

The trap game narrative is already in full swing as the overall belief is that nothing is scarier than an October opponent with diminished playoff chances. It is the season of tricks and treats, freights and scares, but nothing is affecting the confidence of defensive coordinator Kane Wommack ahead of this matchup.

“That was obviously a pretty tremendous stretch there,” Wommack said. “I felt like every team, I would come in and look at the stat line, and somehow they were always number one in the SEC and scoring offense and half the numbers and all those things. You’re going to have teams that maybe on paper look a certain way, but when you turn on the tape, this is a very dangerous football team, and I think our players have the maturity, enough to see those things.”

Like head coach Kalen DeBoer jokes about with Taylor Lewan and Will Compton on “Bussin’ With The Boys”, the films that are most horrifying to him and the team are the games Alabama lost last year. The horror ensured directly after the Crimson Tide’s best wins, but the overall belief is that Alabama is doing a better job of preventing the rat poison from creeping into the building.

In Wommack’s view, the team has processed last season’s mistakes and learned how to handle success with maturity.

“I think we have the maturity, or we have developed the maturity to learn from our past adversity,” Wommack said.” That’s something that I think this team has an edge right now in large part because we have learned from mistakes of the past, and we haven’t forgotten about those things. Those are things we need to make sure that we carry throughout the rest of the season. Success, if handled properly and not allowing complacency, which complacency will creep into any area that you allow it. It’s like rodents getting into your house, right? Once they’re in, it’s hard to get them out. Complacency is the exact same way. You have to find ways to sure up any area for us as a football team to make sure complacency isn’t there, and I think Coach DeBoer has done a tremendous job of that with our players. I think our players have maturity to make sure that those things don’t happen.”

Alabama will face unranked South Carolina this Saturday at 2:30 p.m. CT this Saturday. The game can be watched on ABC or the ESPN app.