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Early in Kalen DeBoer's tenure at Alabama, power brokers and boosters are growing concerned

Staples-Low PFPby: Chris Low and Andy Staples09/03/25

It was 25 years ago that then Boston Celtics team president and head coach Rick Pitino unleashed his infamous rant.

“Larry Bird is not walking through that door fans. Kevin McHale’s not walking through that door, and Robert Parish is not walking through that door,” Pitino lamented after a late-season loss to the Toronto Raptors that saw the Celtics fall 11 games under .500.

Well, as Defcon 4 escalates to Defcon 3 among the Alabama fan base following the Crimson Tide’s listless 31-17 season-opening loss to Florida State last Saturday, here’s the reality: Nick Saban is not walking through that door, at least not according to him or anybody close to him.

Here’s another reality: Kalen DeBoer, through his 14 games as the guy who replaced Saban, simply hasn’t been able to get Alabama to play with the consistency, edge, focus and toughness (mental or physical) that defined Alabama’s program during Saban’s legendary career.

And, yes, there’s genuine concern, not the embellished type, among Alabama power brokers and boosters about what they’ve seen, or more accurately, what they haven’t seen, from the Crimson Tide under DeBoer.

Tangible proof of a championship-caliber football program.

As one longtime Alabama donor — and not just any donor, but the kind who has their portrait hanging in the Donor Hall of Recognition at Bryant-Denny Stadium — told On3: “We’re spoiled, always have been. But when we put a team out there that looks uninspired like we have far too many times these past two years and lose to teams that we’re clearly more talented than, that’s when it becomes a problem … and not just a bunch of spoiled fans griping.”

The numbers have been regurgitated ad nauseam, and they’re not pretty. Alabama is 5-5 in its last 10 games, and four of those losses have come against unranked teams. Saban won 100 games in a row against unranked opponents.

Alabama’s defense has been a frequent target of fans, even though the Crimson Tide finished 10th nationally a year ago in scoring defense (17.4 points per game), the lowest total for an Alabama defense since 2017. But a common theme in the losses has been not being able to stop the run. In three of its five losses under DeBoer, Alabama has given up more than 200 rushing yards. Florida State rushed for 230 yards last Saturday, and here’s the most telling stat of the game and the one that galls Alabama fans the most: The Seminoles only had to throw 14 passes, completing nine, and still won by two touchdowns.

Good luck finding the last time Alabama has lost a football game and its opponent completed so few passes. Here’s a hint: It never happened under the previous coach.

When things go badly in the realm of SEC football, everything matters.

What kind of shirt a coach wears during games. How demonstrative he is on the sideline. How passionate he is or isn’t during press conferences. How fiery he is when he swears. That is, if he swears at all.

DeBoer’s even-keeled disposition works against him, especially coming in behind a guy like Saban, who was breathing fire every time he stepped on the field, met with his team, and most of the time, when he stepped in front of the microphone.

Alabama’s players have defended DeBoer and said they have embraced his approach. The problem is they haven’t played like they embrace it, at least not consistently. Against FSU, Alabama looked slow at times, even hesitant, and that’s difficult to explain.

As someone who was at practice the Thursday before game week, it was fast-paced, physical and filled with veteran players holding everyone accountable. It was anything but Club Med.

The label that no football team wants is that it’s soft. And again, given DeBoer’s fatherly demeanor and genuine nature — particularly when his team plays uninspired in the season opener a year removed from losing four games for the first time since 2007 (Saban’s first year) — it’s only natural that people are going to label the coach as being soft.

But then ask anyone who has ever coached with DeBoer or coached against him, and nowhere do you hear that he’s soft. There were no signs of that at Washington, Fresno State, or going way back to Sioux Falls.

He didn’t forget how to coach or relate to players overnight, and as one longtime coach told me about DeBoer, he’s as smart as anybody out there.

The lingering question: Is he a good fit at Alabama, or even a good fit in the SEC?

“You need to be able to coach Southern guys,” a coaches’ agent (not DeBoer’s) said. “They want to be coached hard. Look at the way [Georgia’s] Kirby Smart coaches.”

Alabama thrived under Saban with a mentality that every team on the schedule was a nameless, faceless opponent and the Crimson Tide were competing only against their own standard. On Saban’s best teams, players enforced that standard. A video posted last year by former Alabama strength coach Scott Cochran shows Damion Square, a Tide defensive tackle from 2008-12, summing up this mentality in R-rated fashion to his teammates before a game.

“It ain’t my fault you the next man on the motha——‘ schedule,” Square seethes. “We’re Bama. That’s what we do. They talk that s— because they’re scared. We ain’t talking no s—. We runnin’ in their house, we blowing that b—- up, and we going home. That’s the routine. That’s how we do it. It won’t change today. I promise you.”

Saban had a phrase for this mindset: “Make his ass quit.”

Against Florida State, the Seminoles looked like the ones trying to make the Tide quit. Alabama linebackers absorbed blows instead of destroying blocks. Kadyn Proctor, a 6-foot-7, 366-pound junior offensive tackle considered an elite NFL draft prospect, allowed six pressures and a sack and got blown up on one run play by 262-pound Florida State true freshman Darryl Desir.

In 14 games at Alabama, DeBoer has lost four games as a favorite of 13.5 points or more. Meanwhile, the best Alabama has played under DeBoer was the first half of last year’s Georgia game, when Alabama raced out to a 28-0 lead. That seems like the behavior of a team that gets up for the big games and lightens up when it is expected to win.

Despite the restlessness in Tuscaloosa right now and calls for DeBoer’s job by some in the media, it’s way too premature, absurd really, to write the epitaph on his coaching career at Alabama. It’s one game into his second season, and while some would argue that there’s a pattern developing, it’s still just one game. Alabama is also set to return key starters, running back Jam Miller and defensive tackle Tim Keenan, from injury in time for the showdown at Georgia on September 27.

Notre Dame lost to Northern Illinois at home in Week 2 a year ago and went on to play in the national championship game. In 2014, the first year of the playoff, Ohio State lost at home in Week 2 to a Virginia Tech team that finished 6-6 in the regular season. The Buckeyes went on to win the national championship that season.

So maybe the prudent thing to do is judge DeBoer on how this team responds the rest of the way and not what’s happened in his first 14 games, which nobody would debate has been below standard. Even DeBoer himself said Monday that the “learning moments” are over.

“This is us and our program, and again, we understand the situation we put ourselves in and that we’re in, but it is a long season,” DeBoer said. “Let’s take care of business this week. … That’s been our philosophy all along, but we’ve really got to live it now.”

The Monday morning quarterbacks have set their sights on Alabama athletic director Greg Byrne as much, if not more, than they have DeBoer, but that’s what happens when you’re the guy who makes the call on the coach replacing a legend, and the transition is anything but smooth.

Byrne had DeBoer, and ironically enough, FSU coach Mike Norvell at the top of his list from the outset, and some will tell you the order was really Norvell and then DeBoer. Either way, they were the two Byrne wanted.

Soon after DeBoer was hired, Byrne talked candidly about the significance of the hire and compared it to legendary UCLA basketball coach John Wooden when he retired after the 1975 season. Wooden won 10 national championships, including seven in a row from 1967-73.

Following him was going to be next to impossible (sound familiar?), and the guy who did, Gene Bartow, lasted two seasons before leaving UCLA to start the program at UAB as athletic director and head coach. Bartow won Pac-8 titles both seasons he was at UCLA and went to the Final Four in his first season. Still, UCLA was upset by Idaho State in the NCAA tournament regional semifinals in 1977. So after going 52-9 with Wooden’s shadow hovering everywhere he went, Bartow decided the pressure and media scrutiny weren’t worth it. He resigned and headed across the country to UAB, where he spent 18 years and took the Blazers to nine NCAA tournaments, including an Elite Eight appearance in the program’s third year of existence.

One of Bartow’s players on that 1976 team, Ralph Drollinger, told the Los Angeles Times that the hate mail Bartow received was brutal. Years later, Bartow acknowledged that he was probably too thin-skinned and let the stress of the job get to him.

Although the two situations are not entirely alike, where DeBoer seems better equipped to handle the rough waters is that he’s not one to get caught up in things on the periphery. The people who know him best and have worked with him the longest say it’s his “superpowers.”

But at a place like Alabama, even superpowers can be tested.

As another prominent booster opined, fans are especially frustrated by how “little emotion” they see from DeBoer and his entire staff, and that has seemed to trickle down to the players.

While everyone in the media scrambled to dig up DeBoer’s buyout numbers following the FSU loss (around $60 million if he were to be fired on or after Dec. 1, paid in equal monthly installments through Dec. 31, 2031), the crimson masses were left to wonder if everything they had heard this offseason — a different comfort level, more accountability and a better understanding among the players of what to expect — was legit or simply talk.

Or maybe somewhere in between.

DeBoer insists the Florida State loss doesn’t represent a carryover of the issues that plagued Alabama last season. “How I can address the team is completely different than a year ago,” DeBoer said Monday. “We don’t need to speak in those terms, but it feels different. There’s more of a flat-out upset. I can use a lot of different words to explain it. Really upset about how it went.”

We should know whether this team is different by the middle of October, if not before. Saban once mused, “Maybe we’ve just won too damn much around here,” after Alabama won the 2014 SEC championship only to lose to Ohio State in the semifinal round of the playoff. The translation: The Tide, after winning back-to-back national championships in 2011 and 2012, had the audacity to go two straight years without winning another one, which didn’t sit well with some of the fans.

That wasn’t unique to Saban’s tenure, though. Bill Curry succeeded Ray Perkins, who succeeded Bear Bryant. Curry had a brick thrown through his office window following a 22-12 loss to Ole Miss in his second season when the 1-3 Rebels rallied to win after scoring two touchdowns in the game’s final 46 seconds. The No. 12 Crimson Tide didn’t complete a single pass the entire game. After his third season in 1989, Curry was offered a contract extension after a 10-2 finish, share of the SEC title — but also a third straight loss to Auburn in the Iron Bowl. The extension came with a catch. It didn’t include a raise, and Curry would be stripped of the ability to hire and fire assistant coaches. Curry got the message and resigned to take the job at Kentucky.

Fast forward to now, and Alabama has lost as many games in its last 10 outings (five) as Saban did in five seasons from 2016-20, a run that produced two national championships.

After ULM comes to Bryant-Denny Stadium this Saturday, Alabama faces Wisconsin at home on Sept. 13 and travels to Georgia on Sept. 27 after a bye week. Then comes a four-week SEC gauntlet in October of Vanderbilt at home, Missouri on the road, Tennessee at home and South Carolina on the road.

DeBoer’s message to his team was simple: “Don’t overthink this. Just go out and play. Do what you love. Don’t listen to the person that’s in your ear telling you this and that. Go out there and just do you.”

That’s been DeBoer’s persona everywhere he’s been, and he’s won everywhere he’s been.

It’s important to remember, too, that he ran to this challenge and embraced it on the heels of taking Washington to the national championship game. It’s not like DeBoer was slumming it at some school that didn’t have the resources to win big. And don’t forget that Alabama had to buy out DeBoer’s $12 million contract at Washington just to get him.

But Alabama isn’t for everyone, and everyone isn’t a fit for Alabama. You hear that word, ‘fit,’ a lot in college football circles. Byrne talked about finding the right fit when he hired DeBoer 49 hours after Saban told the team on Jan. 10, 2024 that he was retiring.

It’s fair to ask, whether DeBoer doesn’t make it past this year or coaches 15 more years and wins multiple national titles at Alabama, is there such a thing as the “right fit” when you’re replacing an icon like Nick Saban?

We may be only one game into DeBoer’s second season, but it sure looks like we’re going to find out soon enough.