Kirby Smart shares when he became familiar with Kalen DeBoer, what he’s seen

Ahead of their highly anticipated meeting in Tuscaloosa on Saturday, Georgia Bulldogs head coach Kirby Smart shared his familiarity, and what he’s seen in new Alabama Crimson Tide head coach Kalen DeBoer.

Smart explained that his connection to DeBoer actually comes from Oregon Ducks head coach Dan Lanning. A former Smart assistant, Lanning coaches one of Washington‘s biggest rivals and the two had multiple marquee games that Smart followed over the past couple of years, introducing him to DeBoer.

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“I didn’t really know who he was until probably when Lanning went to Oregon and I followed Dan a lot and they had the big rivalry with them,” Kirby Smart said. “Not really last year but the year before I started following Dan, their season. I think that was maybe the year that we had played Dan and they went on to play Washington I think once that year and then twice the following year. That’s when it started popping up on my radar because Washington historically was known for great defense way back when and he changed that. Not that they weren’t good on defense they were good on defense, but he made them good on offense.”

Kalen DeBoer first went to Washington in 2022, the same season that Dan Lanning took over at Oregon. In his two seasons there, he went 25-3 and took the Huskies to the College Football Playoff in his second season. He also managed to beat Lanning’s Oregon teams three times. He did all of that after inheriting a team that had gone 4-8 the season before he got there.

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Prior to Washington, DeBoer had been the head coach at Fresno State and Sioux Falls, while making several different stops as an offensive coordinator. He has a career record of 107-12 at every level of the sport.

“His record speaks for itself. Everywhere he’s been he’s been successful. He’s very confident in what he does and his organizational methods. I think it takes that in the situation he’s in. In the situation he’s in you’ve got to be pretty confident in your own skin to go in there and do things your way, especially with the record they’ve had. It seems like he’s done that without any issue or problem.”

The current challenge for Kalen DeBoer is to replace a legend in Nick Saban. That’s a task that Kirby Smart thinks he’s gone about in a smart way to this point.

“I think the smartest thing he’s done is he hasn’t changed everything. Offensively they have some similarities because they have the same quarterback, and we’ll probably see a lot more wrinkles that they haven’t shown but for the most part, they’ve kept some of the staples that they had last year because it probably makes the quarterback comfortable.”

The game against Georgia is going to be Kalen DeBoer’s first SEC conference game since arriving at Alabama, representing a massive step up in competition.