Alabama NewsCenter 2022 football preview: University of South Alabama
Jalen Wayne is among the players who have South Alabama coach Kane Wommack excited about the possibilities for his offense this season. (Scott Donaldson)
Kane Wommack has been a football coach since 2010. His career spans stints as an assistant coach at Tennessee-Martin, Jacksonville State, Ole Miss, Eastern Illinois, South Alabama and Indiana.
Now he’s beginning his second season as the South Alabama head coach. And he’s pretty relaxed as the 2022 season-opener against Nicholls State draws near.
“I told my wife the other day I’m probably as calm as I’ve ever been going into a season,” the 35-year-old said. “I think some of that comes from knowing that you’ve got to be ready to adjust to anything that comes out.”
Wommack said the offseason work his squad has done is getting it ready for 12 moments, the key moments that will arise in the Jaguars’ 12 regular season games.
“What you do in those 12 moments is an indicator of all the work that you’ve put in,” he said. “But it’s also how we are judged and how we are valued. I’m excited to see all the things that we have accomplished in fall camp and hoping they show up on game day.
“We talk about operating with a neutral mindset in our program, regardless if you feel great or you don’t feel great, we’re up 20 or we’re down 20,” the coach said. “I can’t tell the guys what is going to happen on game day. There will be adversity; we know that. That’s happened in every game that I’ve ever been a part of and every game I’ll continue to coach in. Can we work to overcome that adversity with the consistency that we’ve built in our offseason?”
Wommack has told his Jaguars to be ready for adversity, because it’s going to come. Murphy’s Law – “Anything that could go wrong, will go wrong” – will rear its head.
“I do have to be prepared to adjust our team regardless of the outcome of the first game of the season, second game of the season,” the coach said. “Just knowing that we do have the staff, we have the players to make those adjustments accordingly. I think that we’ll put ourselves in a good position as we navigate through the harshness of a football season.”
Wommack said Year 2 of his head coaching career should feature a team that is improved from the squad that went 5-7 a season ago.
“I think we’re in a great place in terms of the overall culture of our program and team,” he said. “We have greatly improved in our overall depth on our roster and certainly talent at a number of positions that we thought we were deficient in a year ago.”
The coach said he and his staff addressed needs on the offensive line, at running back and in depth at defensive back.
“What I’m excited to see is how well our team jells within those 12 opportunities,” Wommack said. “I’m seeing some things from our offense right now that’s truly exciting. Some of the chemistry that they’ve had when you finally get Carter Bradley and La’Damian Webb and Jalen Wayne and Devin Voisin and D.J. Thomas-Jones – all those guys on the field at the same time with this offensive line starting to create that unity and physicality that they’re playing with.
“Can we show that and jell in the first half of our season as an offense? Can we do those things defensively where we can rotate more bodies than we did a year ago and still uphold the standard of the swarm D?” the coach asked. “Those are the things that I’m really looking forward to seeing and adjusting as we get into the front end of the season.”
Alabama NewsCenter is posting season previews for all 16 college football programs in Alabama. Read previews for Jacksonville State University, the University of North Alabama, Alabama State University, Birmingham-Southern College, Samford University, Faulkner University, Tuskegee University, the University of West Alabama, Troy University, Miles College, Huntingdon College, Alabama A&M University and UAB, and look for season previews of Auburn University and the University of Alabama this week.
