The Alabama Football defense struggled all game long against the Vanderbilt offense.

As a result, the Commodores upset then-No. 1 Alabama 40-35 on Saturday in Nashville. Six of those 40 points came from a pick six.

Vanderbilt converted 12 of 18 third-down attempts against a Crimson Tide defense that ranked second nationally in defending third downs.

It wasn’t that I didn’t try to adapt. Alabama defensive coordinator Kane Wommack said Monday that some of Vanderbilt’s plays in the first half had not previously been filmed.

“Some things they did from tight end pictures on the ball and tight end pictures off the ball,” Wommack said.

So Alabama tried to adapt based on what Vanderbilt had put in place.

“We made some adjustments to our front and did some things to our defensive ends as far as job responsibilities,” Wommack said. “That helped us on the first and second descents. We put them in a number of third-down situations where we didn’t execute and left the field.”

Wommack praised Vanderbilt for holding off on certain plays until later in the game.

“So they kept adding new wrinkles as the game went on, so we had to constantly adapt to what they were doing,” Wommack said. “I thought they had a really good game plan in that regard.”

Alabama’s failure to get off the field on third down also hurt Alabama’s game. This only gave Vanderbilt more opportunities to create even more wrinkles.

“You could point to probably 8-10 different third-down situations where we have a whole different conversation about how we played when we leave the field right there,” Wommack said.

Vanderbilt scored 26 first downs and had more than 42 minutes of possession on offense. That resulted in 418 yards for the Vanderbilt offense with no takeaways.

“If we don’t get any of our keys to winning and play with the ‘Bama fundamentals,’ that’s ultimately on me as defensive coordinator,” Wommack said. “It is my responsibility to ensure that we get our players to perform at the highest possible level and become the best versions of themselves on match day and we failed to do that on Saturday.”

Nick Kelly is a beat writer from Alabama AL.com and Alabama Media Group. Follow him on X And Instagram.