Does Kalen DeBoer consider his first year at Alabama a success?

TAMPA, Fla. – Kalen DeBoer’s first season as the Alabama coach ended on Tuesday with a disappointing thud, a 19-13 loss to an unranked Michigan team in the ReliaQuest Bowl. 

The Crimson Tide finished with a 9-4 (5-3 SEC) record in DeBoer’s inaugural year, which saw the program’s record streak of 10-win seasons snapped at 16 seasons. Alabama did not reach the 12-team College Football Playoff after its third road loss of the regular season.

Alabama did, however, win three games against ranked opponents (Georgia, Missouri and LSU) and was undefeated at Saban Field at Bryant-Denny Stadium. DeBoer and his staff also signed the nation’s second-best recruiting class in 2025, per the On3 Industry Rankings.

Immediately after the loss to Michigan, DeBoer was asked if he considers Year 1 a success.

“Every time you’re in the locker room and you have something like this, it’s disappointing,” DeBoer said. “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.

“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. I don’t care if it’s turnovers, penalties. It’s everything.”

DeBoer continued, “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.”

What about from a player’s perspective?

Four Alabama veterans spoke to reporters after the loss, and offensive guard Tyler Booker had nothing but praise for DeBoer’s first year after what was likely the junior’s final game.

“I feel like the coaching staff did a great job,” Booker said. “People are gonna probably laugh at me when I say that, but you’ve gotta understand that their first act of duty when they got here was retain the team, especially in the era of NIL and a bunch of guys left, but we also got a bunch of guys to come in. 

“So to do all that, to have a great recruiting that they just recruited in and to go out here and really battle in the SEC for the first time, they did a great job. There’s obviously things we could have done better as players, obviously things that they could have done better as coaches. But there’s always gonna be room for improvement, from top to bottom, and they’ll be the first one to tell you that. But I’m just very blessed to have had this coaching staff. 

“I’m glad that Coach DeBoer came here, and just a shoutout to him because it takes a certain amount of pride and a certain amount of confidence within one’s self to come follow up the greatest coach of all time.”

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