Alabama may be getting a major piece of its defensive front back just in time for the LSU trip, and Yhonzae Pierre sounded pretty confident about it on Tuesday.
“We got TG coming back, Terrance Green,” Pierre said to reporters Tuesday, via 247’s Mike Rodak. “We’ve been working on schemes for the defense and for them, so it’s going to be amazing to see what we do Saturday.”
That would be a welcome development for a Crimson Tide run defense that looked dominant early, then slipped against Georgia and Tennessee before settling back in against Texas A&M. The turning point came when Oregon transfer DT Terrance Green went down in the second quarter against Georgia. Since then, Alabama’s interior defense hasn’t been quite the same.
Green has been Alabama’s best interior defensive lineman this season, and his absence has been felt in more ways than one. He’s not just a run-stopper. He also gives the Tide more juice as a pass rusher, with 2.5 sacks in the first five games, and his return would hand Kane Wommack a lot more flexibility up front.
That flexibility has been missing lately. Injuries have forced Wommack to lock certain players into certain spots instead of moving pieces around the way Alabama wants to. With Green potentially back and Justin Hill healthier after the bye, the front seven could be close to whole again, with Desmond Umeozulu still out.
That matters because Alabama’s early-season front was a problem for opposing offenses. It was especially nasty against Kenny Minchey and a Kentucky offense that has been next to impossible to stop outside of Alabama’s trip to Lexington.
Now the Tide may get a chance to show that version of itself again in Baton Rouge.
If Alabama is going to pull the road upset in Death Valley on Saturday and keep its College Football Playoff hopes alive, that front seven probably needs to look a lot more like it did in September. Wommack will have to dial up one of the best games of his life to slow down Sam Leavitt and Lane Kiffin’s explosive, balanced offense.
And with a young quarterback and an offense that has lost the ground game it had early in the year, Alabama can’t afford for this one to turn into a shootout.
Whether Wommack can get that done is still to be determined. But at least he may have a much healthier defensive group to work with.
In Other News...
Philip Rivers Could Leave Alabama For A Job That Changes Two Programs
Philip Rivers has built a second football life in Alabama, coaching at St. Michael Catholic High School while guiding his son Gunner, a committed NC State quarterback, through the next step of his career. Now the former NFL quarterback and NC State standout has surfaced as a leading candidate to take over the Wolfpack program after Dave Doeren was fired, a development that ties his current Alabama stop directly to a job with major meaning in Raleigh.
For Alabama fans who have watched Rivers settle into the high school game, the possibility carries an unusual ripple effect because it could pull him away from the state and into a role that would reshape both programs. Rivers has already shown respect for NC State and has drawn NFL head-coaching interest before, but this opening comes with a different kind of pull, one that would put father, son and alma mater on the same collision course. [Read more 🡒]
Kentucky Suddenly Has A Surprising Role In Alabamas SEC Drama
Alabamas playoff margin is getting thinner by the week, and Paul Finebaum said the stakes of the upcoming road trip to LSU are hard to overstate. With the Crimson Tide already carrying a weaker non-conference schedule, the value of their best early resume win has also been complicated by Florida States recent coaching change, which only adds to the pressure on every remaining SEC test.
Finebaum also pointed to Kentucky as an unexpected piece of the larger picture, another result Alabama has reason to watch closely while trying to keep its own path to the College Football Playoff alive. In a conference race where Alabama and LSU are being measured against one another, the Wildcats performance could end up shaping how the playoff conversation looks around the Tide, even before the league's biggest games finish sorting themselves out. [Read more 🡒]
Alabama Defense Is Betting On One Edge Against LSU
Alabamas defense has not piled up the kind of backfield disruption that usually jumps off the page in the SEC, sitting near the bottom of the league in tackles-for-loss and sacks. Fatutoa Henry leads the Tide in both categories, and defensive coordinator Kane Wommack has leaned into a broader view of pressure, stressing that the real goal is to force hurried decisions and create takeaways rather than simply chase sack totals.
That approach matters even more with LSU quarterback Sam Leavitt coming in after throwing eight interceptions in six games. Alabama has already shown one area where it can change games, leading the SEC in interceptions alongside Kentucky, and Wommack will be counting on that ball-hawking edge to make up for the lack of consistent edge production. [Read more 🡒]