Amari Sabb was losing his voice yelling.

His brother, Alabama safety Keon Sabb, was sprinting down the sideline after intercepting Western Kentucky quarterback TJ Finley. Keon read Finley’s eyes then bolted from his zone to take the ball out of the intended receiver's hands. He raced 64 yards in the other direction before he was eventually run down. The play set up Alabama to score its second touchdown of an eventual 63-0 drubbing of the Hilltoppers.

It was also Keon’s second pick of the first quarter.

“The first one, I was waiting and I said, ‘They need to throw one deep so he can get one,’” Amari recalled. “And he goes and drops back and coverage and he gets it, I stood up and started screaming. I was yelling. Then the second one came around, I was yelling even louder. I almost lost my voice.”

The highlight reel plays helped Keon earn SEC Defensive Player of the Week honors continuing a strong rise for the redshirt sophomore safety. Last season, Keon helped Michigan win the 2023 National Championship and had six tackles against a Kalen DeBoer-led Washington team in the title game. This offseason, Keon swapped the maize and blue for crimson and white, joining the coach he helped take down in January.

​​“I think I adjusted really well,” Keon said after Saturday’s win. “It helps when everybody just [has] trust in me. It makes the transition a lot easier. People are always good to me. Players are always making sure I’m good. It’s a [advantage] knowing you’ve got brothers everywhere, coaches always believing in you.”

Keon is used to having brothers everywhere. Both Amari and Xavier Sabb – Keon’s other younger brother — were in the stands Saturday, and have been watching their eldest brother shine on the gridiron since Keon’s days growing up in Glassboro, New Jersey.

“Those are my biggest critics right there,” Keon said. “So making plays in front of them was good, but they got on me for a couple of plays. So they keep me humble, for sure.”

Keon took just one game to earn the support of Alabama fans after arriving this offseason. But he wasn’t just brought to Alabama for his national championship accolades and his proclivity for picking off passes. He was also brought in to be a leader in a rebuilding Alabama secondary full of freshmen who needed a guide on how to get comfortable playing for one of the country’s powerhouse programs.

Thanks to those very same brothers who cheered him on from the stands of Bryant-Denny Stadium, Keon has been just that.

Keon wakes up every morning to a text from his father. The man who has been his biggest role model doesn’t want him to waste a day.

“​​I'm big on being hungry every day,” Antoine Sabb said. “Because they live a better life than I did. We provide a lot for them. But sometimes you’ve got to make them be grounded and be hungry, like what the mission is. Because you get complacent and the next thing you know, you’re just like everybody else.”

The messages remind Keon to continue working, even as he succeeds at the highest level in college football. That mentality has been passed down to Keon from a father who knows all about the grind of being both a college athlete and a leader.

Antoine played point guard at Maryland Eastern Shore during his college days. Before that, he grew up as a role model for his entire family. Antoine signed his siblings up for football and basketball practice and has been a staple of his community in Glassboro, a town just under a half hour south of Philadelphia. He’s been giving haircuts to local kids in Glassboro since the early 1990s and currently serves as the director of the Glassboro Boys and Girls Club.

“He's a very strong-minded person,” Keon’s uncle Tim Breaker said. “So I know it rubs off on Keon a lot, as far as his dad's approach to life. Because he's always on [the] go. He's always thinking of the next thing to get better at. He’s a very passionate, fiery person. So when you see Keon play, he also takes that mantra from his father.”

Antoine passed down his mantra of hard work and staying prepared to his son, and he hasn’t been alone in showing Keon the way. Keon’s older sister Naiyana played basketball at the Division II level. Breaker was also a role model for Keon, who grew up attending games at the University of Delaware where Breaker starred for the Blue Hens at safety before spending a few seasons in Europe.

“I would always come back, and I came back completely and stayed home because Keon was getting older,” Breaker said. “So to watch him play the position and be better than me, and to watch him do it, it's a feeling that is unexplainable.”

The Sabb brothers have always been competitive.

It started during Naiyana’s basketball practices when the three boys would play two-on-one, Keon against Amari and Xavier. The elder never gave his little brothers an edge.

“You know who came out on top,” Keon said with a smile.

Chippy pickup games as kids graduated into Amari and Xavier pushing their brother during workouts when he comes home from college. They run sprints. The goal for Amari and Xavier is always to win. Once again, Keon doesn’t give them the satisfaction.

“When Keon’s home in the spring it’s like, ‘I got to beat him’ or ‘I got to come close to him,’ Antoine said. “And obviously, they can't beat him but it pushes them to that level, and they really get at it. It's a great thing to see when I don't have to really be involved when he’s home. They just compete against each other. So he kind of showed them the way.”

Keon has shown his little brothers the way for his entire career. Amari and Xavier watched Keon return kicks and play receiver during his first two prep seasons at Glassboro. They watched as he eventually settled at safety, playing one season at Williamstown High School before finishing his senior year at IMG Academy. They watched Keon commit to Clemson before eventually flipping to Michigan as a top 100 recruit in the Class of 2022. They watched him win a national championship with the Wolverines in just his second season at the college level.

Then they drove 14 hours from Glassboro to watch Keon’s emphatic debut with the Crimson Tide.

“He’s Superman to them,” Antoine said. “He's big brother. He's always been big brother.”

Keon’s younger brothers are now entering that same chaotic portion of their football journeys that Keon once occupied. Amari is a four-star recruit in the Class of 2026. Like his older brother, he plays on both sides of the ball, while Xavier is one of the most exciting wide receiver products in the 2027 class.

Both brothers will soon have tough decisions to make when it comes to cutting down schools, choosing where to visit and balancing their college prospects while staying focused on their prep careers. Once they eventually arrive on the college scene as a freshman, they’ll have to grapple with the inevitable lessons that first-year players go through.

Fortunately for Amari and Xavier, they’ve had a role model in Keon who hasn’t only provided a roadmap for his younger siblings but has been an ever-present voice the whole way. Keon calls Amari and Xavier every day to tell them what he’s doing at practice. He speaks like a veteran, passing on the lessons from those who led him and sharing with his little brothers what it requires to make it at the college level.

“What's important for them is they should be better prepared for what to expect when they arrive because of what he's been through — the experiences and understanding the mental part of football,” Antoine said. “The physical part is easy. He teaches them the mental part of it. Film study, being able to push yourself through exhaustion. A lot of freshmen think they’re prepared for Division I until they get there and then it’s like, ‘Whoa, this is a lot.’ So he preps them on that."

One of Antoine's mantras reveals the secret of how Keon has been able to get so comfortable so quickly at Alabama.

“If you always prepare, you’ll never have to get ready,” Antoine said. “We talk about that all the time. What are we trying to do? We’re trying to win the day. So if he’s got class, what's your schedule like? So we try to prepare to win that day to be successful that day.”

That emphasis on prep and discipline helped Keon quickly grasp his role within Alabama’s secondary and has him off and running with two takeaways in 2024. It helped Keon make the most of his time on the field at Michigan last season, where he logged 28 tackles, five pass breakups and a pair of interceptions in 14 appearances.

Keon’s prep and approach to the game have also become an example for Alabama’s young defensive back room. When he arrived at Alabama, the coaching staff emphasized they needed a leader alongside fellow veterans Malachi Moore and DeVonta Smith.

In March, DeBoer knew he had that leader. He foreshadowed Keon’s important presence in Alabama’s secondary and called him an impact player on defense.

This fall, Moore called him a pro.

Alabama defensive coordinator Kane Wommack called him a student of the game.

But the title that will always mean the most to Keon is brother.

“I think teaching the guys here has helped me with my brothers and teaching my brothers has helped me with the guys here,” Keon said. “I feel like they tend to have some of the same questions or just me being at the age that they were at, there’s some stuff they can’t see yet, and just me being an older guy I’ve seen it. I’ve been through some different things so I can give them my personal experiences and how I’ve dealt with things and they go from there.”