It wasn’t that Quinnen Williams was fighting to not smile, but it’s clear he’s still figuring out this whole fame thing.

A year ago, Alabama's nose tackle was a backup. Twelve months before that, he was a redshirt freshman understudy of Jonathan Allen.

Now he's under the bright TV lights that occasionally catch the braces in his careful grin as he answers questions about being the new sensation on the Crimson Tide defensive line.

“It’s cool," he said. "It’s not a distraction to me right now, but it’s cool to have my parents and my grandmother to be proud of me and watch stuff. But I really don’t look at it. I make sure I’m focused on my team, focused on the defense itself and just focused on what we have at stake.

"I don’t want to fall off on what I’m listening about the NFL and all this stuff like that. If my head is straight, everybody else around me head is straight. I don’t want to get cocky or complacent or anything like that.”

The Wenonah High product from Birmingham picked up a few national player-of-the-week honors after another huge game at LSU. He had career highs in tackles (10) and tackles for loss (3.5) with 2.5 sacks in the 29-0 whipping of LSU.

The converted interior lineman mauled the Tiger front throughout the night as he continues his huge season. From a first-time starter to a potential first-round pick if he were to leave, Williams appears to be handling his new status well.

"I really don’t go out for real for real, so when I do go out people do recognize me," he said. "It’s cool.”

None of it has become a burden just yet.

“It’s fun to me," Williams said. "I’m going to always have fun. I’m not going to ever let anything stress me out about it. It’s always fun.”

It was the opposite of that for LSU's front Saturday night.

The career night came fighting through double teams most of the game as Williams consistently found daylight.

Williams recalled one of his sacks fighting off multiple blockers.

“We knew they were going to be trying to protect (Joe Burrow) most of the game with sliding away from the back so I really just knew Raekwon (Davis) was going to get the outside," Williams said, "so I really had to make sure I had the inside locked down so I wouldn’t give him the pass lane. I really let Raekwon do whatever he wants to because he’s a big-time beast. He can do it all.

"I was just like let me do my job and hold down the inside. We work on double-ball bags, which is like you knock the guard down, but flip your hips on the center. I just did that and it worked so I had to finish the play and get a sack.”

Williams made the play after taking a low block the play earlier. With LSU running an outside zone, the backside guard cut block the 6-4, 295-pound defensive lineman. Williams said he "felt it a little" and was slow to get up but recovered quickly to make the sack.

Through nine games, Williams leads the team with 12 tackles for loss while leading the defensive line with 43 total stops. That’s good for third best overall behind safety Deionte Thompson's 51 and linebacker Dylan Moses' 48.

This comes in his first year replacing Da'Ron Payne -- the first-round pick of the Washington Redskins. Payne developed a reputation for manhandling offensive lineman at the point of attack and Williams is starting to look like a similar bully.

Did he see this coming?

“I’m not going to say I didn’t expect it," Williams said, "but I just feel like I’m doing what everybody did before me. Everybody who played this position or played on this defense, they expect themselves to perform. I feel like I owe the people who came before me, the people who taught me to do it, to play just like them.”

Michael Casagrande is an Alabama beat writer for the Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @ByCasagrande or on Facebook.