Kalen DeBoer discusses possibility of Wilkin Formby, Elijah Pritchett rotating at right tackle for Alabama
As Alabama football is days away from beginning the Kalen DeBoer era, there’s still some unsettled business on the offensive line. With four spots mostly settled, DeBoer and Co. are still letting a pair of players — Wilkin Formby and Elijah Pritchett — battle it out for the starting right tackle role.
Speaking on the SEC coaches teleconference on Wednesday, DeBoer shared that he’s open to letting both tackles play in the season opener and perhaps beyond. While he didn’t name a starter, a number of projections have Formby as the starter with Pritchett — who started in 2023 — as the backup.
But not starting the game on the field, in this scenario, at least, likely won’t keep Pritchett off it.
“Right tackle probably is the other position where there’s competition,” DeBoer said. “I think you could easily see us playing six offensive linemen throughout the game, rotating at one position, that being the right tackle. But we have a guy or two that I think that will continue to come up but not competing right now, necessarily, for one of those other starting spots.”
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Formby is certainly the less seasoned option of the duo, but the redshirt freshman was one of the top offensive linemen in the 2023 signing class before redshirting after appearing in a handful of games. Now, it seems that immense talent has done enough to be in a competition with Pritchett, who redshirted in 2022 before playing in all 13 games at tackle in 2023.
Elsewhere on the line, DeBoer is bullish on what Alabama has up front.
“I think when camp started, there were some changes from what we had this spring. In particular Kadyn Proctor, who was not with us this spring and even more reps with Parker Brailsford, who did start spring ball and now is back with us at center and he’s been there obviously all camp.”
DeBoer has loved the growth from Jalen Milroe over the summer
If Alabama is going to take a step forward in 2024, not just reaching the College Football Playoff but potentially winning it, it’ll take a big jump in production from quarterback Jalen Milroe.
Milroe was electric last season, but how well he can pick up DeBoer‘s new offense is absolutely critical.
“Well in spring it just goes from trying to grasp everything you can with the base, of the basic part of the offense, just to even the process, the procedures, the motions,” DeBoer explained Wednesday on an SEC teleconference call. “For a quarterback there’s a lot. It’s execute the play, it’s also seeing what’s in front of you.”
Milroe has some experience in executing when the games are live. He got consistently better at that over the course of the 2023 season, despite being benched at one point early in the campaign.
Learning all the ins and outs of the new offense is important, because the offense will go as Milroe does. The good news? He seems to have put himself in position to succeed this fall.
“He’s done a great job really in the spring pouring into all that, the reps he had in the summer with the player-run practices were critical because you could tell when Practice 1 kicked off here in the fall that he was taking those steps,” DeBoer said.