Alabama could be calling upon a recent opponent to prepare for huge matchup against Tennessee

The Alabama Crimson Tide are looking to right the ship this week, taking on one of their biggest rivals via the Tennessee Volunteers on Saturday.

There's no need to mince words, as the Tide are aiming to show they belong in the College Football Playoff conversation after a lackluster two weeks.

That starts with a win against the 11th ranked team in the nation, and it may require a callback from the USF game:

Alabama Defense Preparing for Deja Vu, but better

"Well, I think, you know, you look at a lot of the things that we have to do through the week of preparation," said Alabama DC Kane Womack when asked if the USF game helps prepare for Tennessee's offense. "One of the hardest things to do when you're dealing with a team that has nontraditional formations and the wide splits and they're going tempo as fast as you've seen from anybody you face, being able to manufacture that in practice every day is the hardest thing you know that we have to do. And so our scout teams have gotten reps at some of those things. We've looked at what worked well that week and what we needed to improve on, just in terms of the look that we had to give...

"...And so that probably, as much as anything, is a help. Certainly, there's things that we put on tape, right, that you know they're going to look at, we're going to look at. But really each game is, even though they're in the same system and it is the same system, what Tennessee is doing versus what South Florida is doing there, there are enough differences there and they have different identities in terms of what they're trying to get accomplished. So certainly, from a from a week of preparation, that'll be something that's that's huge for our scout teams."

The reason why the USF tape will serve as prep for Tennessee is the relationship of the two head coaches. USF Bulls HC Alex Golesh and Tennessee Volunteers HC Josh Huepel go all the way back to UCF where Heupel was the HC and Golesh was his OC, something that carried over to Tennessee before Golesh took the USF job.

So the offensive structure is far from foreign when analyzing what the Crimson Tide defense has seen thus far.

But what is foreign is Vols QB Nico Iamaleava. The true freshman presents a challenge unique to anything Alabama has dealt with.

We'll see just how prepared the Crimson and White are come Saturday afternoon.

Related: Kalen DeBoer does his best to defend the play that could have cost Alabama the win vs. South Carolina