Kalen DeBoer evaluates Alabama's preparation in leadup to upset to Vanderbilt

No. 1 Alabama fell to Vanderbilt 40-35 on Saturday, triggering a host of questions for first-year coach Kalen DeBoer.

Chief among them was whether there was any inkling this might be coming based on the team’s preparation. Typically when things go south like that, there are signs that players weren’t locked in.

But Alabama had been careful to point out the pitfalls of overlooking anyone, even placing various rat traps around the facility during the week as a mental reminder not to buy too much into the hype after a big win over Georgia. For whatever reason, Saturday still happened.

“When you come out on the short end, everything gets amplified, right?” DeBoer said. “You look into everything on another level. So in regards to that, since that was the question, you can point to every little thing that happened and it be a lack of focus or discipline and having to do it better.”

DeBoer wasn’t convinced that his team’s practices were subpar going into the Vanderbilt game. In fact, quite the opposite.

Whatever the case, it didn’t translate on Saturday for Alabama.

“I think what it really comes down to is doing it better over and over,” DeBoer said. “We gave ourselves little room for error with the way the game started, right? They go down and put a nice drive together and then we have the ball bounce off the helmet, goes for an interception for a touchdown. And so we leave ourselves very little room for error, knowing that the plan they already had in place because it showed up on film in weeks prior to playing us is that they’ll play ball control offense, let the clock run down, shorten the game. They get a lead even moreso. And then the whole taking them out of their game is going to be harder to do because we’re playing from behind.”

That changed the entire complexion of the game for Alabama. The Crimson Tide were put in the uncomfortable position of having to chase the game.

“So offensively we had to kind of probably lose some of the balance that we thought we could have offensively, with our run/pass,” DeBoer said. “We had to speed up the game, try to add more possessions. We still only got nine in the game, and that’s having sped up the game. That’s getting drives at the end of each half where we’re trying to move the ball quickly.”

Those were all factors within the game, though. As far as the actual preparation leading into the game for Alabama, DeBoer was more than satisfied.

“The little mistakes are always going to be looked at as areas where the focus or the discipline wasn’t there,” he said. “But I tell you, our guys prepared. All the noise outside the building, I thought our guys did as good of a job as they could. Everyone’s human, so the pats on the back or whatever they got. But I thought that they were focused on the right things all week long. The effort, the work that was put in seemed like a really good, solid week.

“The ball literally didn’t bounce our way a couple times. We have to make our own breaks and do a better job of making that happen to where the ball ends up in our hands, whether it’s forcing turnovers or making sure that we don’t put the ball on the ground and turn it over ourselves. So all of those things are part of that question.”