Will Anderson’s message to the defense was clear this week.
Football has to be the most important thing.
And judging by the defense’s performance against Mississippi State, Anderson’s message was taken to heart and a leader may have just been crowned.
Anderson was dominant upfront for the Crimson Tide, who was putting an emphasis all week on finding ways to put pressure on Bulldogs quarterback Will Rogers. By the end of the night, Rogers was very familiar with the sophomore as he was brought down by Anderson a total of four times.
The four sacks posted by Anderson were not only in crucial parts of the game but put him in the rare company of other Alabama greats. Anderson’s sack total was the most in a single game by an Alabama player since Derrick Thomas in 1988 who had five sacks against Texas A&M.
“It means a lot,” Anderson said when hearing about the history. “Still haven’t accomplished what I wanted to but I give all the thanks to my coaches and teammates. The preparation was good this week. We were all on the same page and when you’re all on the same page, good things come out of that.”
Getting on the same page was key for the Crimson Tide’s defense who held the Bulldogs to just nine points on the night which made it the second straight season Mike Leach’s offense did not score a touchdown on Alabama. Anderson called out his teammates last Monday about watching more film together and getting a better understanding of each other’s assignments, and it proved worthy on Saturday.
“I think the biggest thing this week from last week was working on our pass rush lanes, and being more effective in getting more pressure on the QB,” Anderson said. “So all week in practice I think that’s one thing we stressed as a unit upfront. And that’s like going back to the interviews this week I was telling you guys like that’s one thing that we have to get better at upfront — watching film together and we did that. We watched film together. We saw how we could affect the quarterback. We saw how we could get back there and we were all on the same page and we all gelled and we everybody created value for themselves.”
As a unit, Alabama had 7.0 total sacks 9.0 tackles for loss which helped cause two interceptions much to the pleasure of head coach Nick Saban who noted Anderson’s performance following the game.
“The fact we rushed three guys a lot and then we rushed four guys a lot and didn’t really rush five guys a whole lot, at all, shows that those guys did a really, really good job of — especially in the four-man rush — of creating pressure, affecting the quarterback,” Saban said. “And that’s the key to the game because if you’ve gotta start trying to pressure these guys — every time we pressured with five guys, the ball came out so fast, run a little slant, so you don’t have a chance to get to the quarterback.
“But when you can rush with four and play split-safety coverage and five-under man and match patterns, the quarterback holds the ball and the pressure’s good. But I thought Will did an outstanding job out there pressuring the quarterback. We actually had the quarterback a couple other times and he got away from us. But it affects them, and I think that was a big part of the game as anything.”
Through just seven games, Anderson has already matched his season total for sacks from a season ago with 7.0 and is now the nation’s leader in tackles for loss with 15.0. The focus and attention to detail produced what Saban believed to be Alabama’s first complete game of the season, and showed what the team’s potential could be if maintained.
“I was really, really proud of the way our players competed in the game,” Saban said. “We certainly needed to respond, and I think the players responded the right way. We played a 60-minute game, sort of dominated the game the way we’d like to play I think it’s the way you wanna play on the road, it’s the way you control the crowd and I thought out guys did a really, really good job of that.”
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Patrick Dowd is a Reporter for Touchdown Alabama Magazine. You can follow him on Twitter, via Pat_Dowd77
