Lane Kiffin weighs in on how Alabama’s defense looks in 2023 compared to prior years

Days after saying he thinks Alabama made a defensive coordinator change in practice, if not in name, Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin opened up more on the challenges of facing the Alabama defense.

Whoever is calling the plays, they always have a ton to work with.

“A challenge always against Alabama on both sides, especially defense for a lot of years,” Kiffin said on an SEC teleconference call on Wednesday. “All the way back to being at Tennessee is the defensive personnel, I mean elite personnel, playing all NFL players.”

This year’s Alabama team is no different, even if the Crimson Tide haven’t gotten off to quite the start to the season that they’d have wanted to.

There are several individual players that will command Ole Miss’ attention, especially off the edge.

Edge rushers Dallas Turner and Chris Braswell have combined for 4.5 sacks and 7.0 tackles for a loss through the first three games. That’s not necessarily atypical for Alabama, but this year’s guys stand out to Kiffin.

“Now they’ve got a defensive end that nobody can block that’s fast as can be,” Kiffin said. “And now they’re actually getting stronger, because now they can versus the old days, they can go pluck guys like Jaylen Key and find starters from other places like the linebacker from Georgia. So they’re even more challenging personnel than ever.”

Coordinator change for Alabama defense?

The big storyline going into the week is Kiffin noting that he thinks the Alabama defense has stealthily changed who is calling plays this season. He noticed the change after the Texas game.

“We’ve been against Kevin (Steele) a number of times,” Kiffin said, according to Ben Garrett of OM Spirit on the On3 network. “Worked with him at Alabama and against him at Auburn and LSU. There seems like there’s been a change there.”

Kiffin believes the play-calling duties have been moved from Steele to another defensive assistant.

“I don’t know what happened after the Texas game, but our guys watching the TV copy and schematically in this last game, certainly seems like [Travaris Robinson]’s now calling the defense. We played him before at South Carolina, so we’re preparing accordingly for him calling the defense. He’s done a good job, too, and they’ve got really good players.”

Alabama and Ole Miss will meet at 3:30 p.m. ET on Saturday on CBS.

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