Alabama Defense Preparing in Practice to Face Phrenetic South Florida Pace In Bryant-Denny Stadium

The South Florida Bulls had the 33rd best scoring offense in college football in 2023.

Aug 31, 2024; Tuscaloosa, Alabama, USA; Western Kentucky Hilltoppers quarterback TJ Finely is brought down by Alabama Crimson Tide defensive lineman LT Overton (22) during the first half at Bryant-Denny Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Gary Cosby Jr.-Imagn Images / Gary Cosby Jr.-Imagn Images

The Alabama football team enters Saturday night's Week 2 matchup against the South Florida Bulls as a 32-point favorite. Despite the expected outcome going easily in the Crimson Tide's favor the Bulls present an interesting challenge for the Alabama defense.

Head coach Alex Golesh is a Josh Huepel disciple utilizing wide splits and a fast tempo to overwhelm opposing defenses. The Bulls found success in 2023 with that approach as Golesh took South Florida to the program's first bowl game since 2018 in just his first year in charge.

Golesh and his Bulls won't be intimidated by the Crimson Tide on Saturday after playing Alabama to a 17-3 slugfest last season in Tampa. Alabama was able to hold South Florida to just 264 yards of offense with 87 yards passing in 2023, but this year's team is still preparing for the most dangerous aspect of the Bulls' offense, its pace.

"Yeah, we saw changes of tempo this last week, and that's something that we’ll be certainly focused on," Alabama head coach Kalen DeBoer said on Monday. "It's hard to simulate that in practice. We do have different ways you can do that within your scout team and communication, substitutions, you got to be really on your game as a coaching staff and the players being ready to find those opportunities where you can sub in, whether it's a different package or just someone needing a breather.

"And then be able to get your cleats in the dirt and being able to be ready to when the ball's snapped, get off the ball. When we were, which was most of the game able to do that, we got a consistent pass rush, and really felt like we executed well. There was a couple of times where we didn't have that and we recovered. We kind of overwhelmed them sometimes this last week, but we need to make sure just we're always ready to play. You need to get that first step on guys. And so that's what a tempo is trying to do, is trying to catch you off guard, it’s trying to to not let you play fast or tire you out. And Coach Womack, he's seen it. He's very experienced. So it's our staff. They'll all do a good job preparing the guys this week."

The Alabama coaching staff is emphasizing the importance of keeping mental focus as any slight distraction can leave an opening for the Bulls to attack. Redshirt sophomore quarterback Byrum Brown passed for over 3000 yards with 26 touchdowns and 11 interceptions in 2023, but his performance against the Tide was underwhelming due to Alabama's ability to continuously get lined up quickly between plays.

"It's a really fast tempo, we're working all week just to be ready for the tempo, running to the ball, get back home after the play is done," Keon Sabb said. "They're trying to beat us to the punch and we just have to be ready for it."

Many people point to last season's game against South Florida as a turning point in the year as the Crimson Tide went on to win the SEC after galvanizing around one another after the subpar performance. The intangible enhancement to the team is hard to measure, but quite practically the matchup against the Bulls gives Alabama a sneak peek at one of its biggest rivals in the Tennessee Volunteers.

Alabama was able to overcome a 13-point deficit and pitch a second half shutout in last season's rivalry game against the Volunteers, thanks in large part to the experience gained by scheduling South Florida.

"They've got an offensive head coach, he came from Tennessee, obviously. They run a lot of tempo. We're a tempo defense, so we're going to get after them," Jihaad Campbell said.

Tuesday kicked off the new game week as Alabama is operating on a different schedule under Deboer but players said an already high paced practice was turned up even more given the circumstances ahead.

"It's really just Tuesday practice, today. We had to go really hard making sure our conditioning is up so Wednesday we can do the same and by the time Saturday comes we'll be ready for that tempo and be able to get ahead of it," Sabb said.