Kalen DeBoer reveals what positives Alabama can take forward into 2025

Alabama didn’t quite have the success the team expected under Kalen DeBoer in his first season as head coach.

The Crimson Tide finished 9-4, losing the ReliaQuest Bowl to Michigan to end the campaign. It was a far cry from College Football Playoff appearances and national titles.

But DeBoer isn’t one to hang his head and brighter days are ahead for Alabama.

“Every time you’re in the locker room and you have something like this, it’s disappointing,” DeBoer said postgame. “But I think there’s a lot of things that you take from it. I know that the guys that hung in there, that probably played their last game in the crimson and white, they wouldn’t have had it any other way as far as to show the grit, show the determination, show the competitiveness. They stayed the course.

“There’s a whole lot more, I just think, that really goes into the last 12 months. People see what happens on a Saturday, but it’s guys choosing to stay here, guys choosing to go from one week to the next when you’re on a little bit of a roller coaster through the middle of the season, and as long as we learn from it, then to me, then it can be a success moving forward.”

Kalen DeBoer ready to move onto 2025

Following a 4-0 start and a win over Georgia, everything was coming up Alabama. DeBoer’s crew lost two of the next three though, including an upset loss to Vanderbilt.

Despite three straight wins, an upset loss to Oklahoma basically knocked Alabama out of the College Football Playoff.

“We’re going to take all these things that happened, and there’s some things that happened in the game today, too, that we’ve got to learn from and make sure that those mistakes don’t hurt us a year from now,” DeBoer said. “I don’t care if it’s turnovers, penalties. It’s everything. So to me, it’s a success if we move forward and we take advantage of the lessons, even though we don’t want to learn those lessons sometimes because they’re hard. We’re going to learn from those lessons, move forward, and be better next year because of it.

“I told the guys that played their last game how much I appreciate them. I know their teammates shared how much they appreciate them, as well, in the locker room, and we’re going to — I know they’re going to make us proud when they move on to the next level, and I promised them we’re going to continue to make them proud with the fight and the standard of competitiveness that they instilled in this program here moving forward.”