Alabama football’s veteran defender to play in 4 different spots in 2025

Alabama football’s veteran defender, Jah-Marien Latham will be seen lining up at a long list of different spots during the 2025 football season.

Latham is entering his sixth season as a member of the Crimson Tide. He has lined up as a defensive end for the most part throughout his time in Tuscaloosa. The former four-star found a home at bandit, a field-side defensive end, in Kane Wommack’s 4-2-5 swarm defense last season, bu t he also carved out a role at the Wolf linebacker position later in the season.

The Crimson Tide’s coaching staff switched him to the Wolf position in the spring, and he has spent a lot of time with the group since then.

While he is expected to contribute a lot as a Wolf linebacker, Latham will take snaps at multiple different positions within multiple packages.

Latham was asked about those positions on Wednesday.

“Wolf, so that’s one,” Latham said. “We have a cheetah package where I go to nose, and then it’s basically like with the wolf position, you would play like kind of like a stack backer, so, like you play in the box and then also I’ll play a little bit of bandit.”

This variety of assignments will be new to Latham, but he plans to lean on his prior experience as he gets comfortable being a versatile defender.

“Since I’ve been here, I played defensive end, so it was like going to outside linebacker was kind of just the opposite of what I used to do,” Latham told reporters. “So, the last few games of this past season, I had a chance to actually get the game reps at wolf, dropping in coverage and everything. So now it’s just putting all those things together so that I can be more versatile.”