Alabama to hire Washington's Kalen DeBoer as head coach, replacing Nick Saban

Alabama and athletic director Greg Byrne have settled on a successor to the legendary Nick Saban. Washington’s Kalen DeBoer informed his school he is accepting the job, per ESPN’s Pete Thamel.

The move comes after Saban announced his retirement on Wednesday, ending a 17-year career with Alabama that included six of his record seven national championships, 16 straight 10-win seasons after going 7-6 in Year 1 in Tuscaloosa, and numerous other New Year’s Six Bowl victories and College Football Playoff appearances, including this past season, where Saban’s final Crimson Tide team fell in overtime vs. eventual national champ Michigan.

DeBoer is a fast-rising star in college football who will now be handed the keys to the premier and dominant college football program of the 21st century. Of course, he comes from Washington, where he coached for just two seasons, 2022 and 2023. But in that time, he flipped the Huskies from a 4-8 record program in 2021 to an 11-2 mark, Alamo Bowl win over Texas and a No. 6 final CFP ranking in 2022.

After returning star quarterback Michael Penix Jr. and his slew of elite pass catchers, Washington came into this past season with immense hype. And in a loaded Pac-12, it was DeBoer’s group who stood head and shoulders above the rest, finishing a perfect 12-0 in the regular season before completing a season sweep of a Top-10 ranked Oregon team in the Pac-12 Championship game.

That win completed a 13-0 mark and booked Washington’s bid to the College Football Playoff, their first since the 2016 season, where, coincidentally, that group led by QB Jake Browning and then-coach Chris Petersen, lost to Alabama in the national semifinal.

However, in this year’s semifinal, Washington broke through and toppled Texas for the second straight postseason to earn a spot in the national title game, something no Pac-12 program had accomplished since Oregon participated and lost in the very first College Football Playoff title game.

Prior to his time with Washington, DeBoer made quite the impression at Fresno State in just two years as well. He went 3-3 in Year 1 during the pandemic-altered 2020 season before leading the Bulldogs to a 10-3 mark in 2021, capping it off with a New Mexico Bowl win over UTEP. Despite just two years of experience as an FBS head coach, Washington saw DeBoer as a rising star and elevated him to the Power Five level.

Clearly, they were onto something, as DeBoer led the Huskies to the CFP within two years of his hiring and is now the pick to replace Nick Saban at Alabama. Quite the meteoric coaching rise.