Everything Kalen DeBoer said after Alabama's 40-35 loss at Vanderbilt

NASHVILLE – Top-ranked Alabama dropped its first game of the season on Saturday night, losing in an upset to Vanderbilt at FirstBank Stadium. After the first loss to Vanderbilt since 1984, head coach Kalen DeBoer spoke to reporters. Here is everything the DeBoer said.

DeBoer’s opening statement…

“Obviously extremely disappointed, frustrated. I mean, you name what it is, that’s what everyone is in the locker room right now. You prepare, and it’s positive energy all week long. I really do think our guys prepared hard. There’s some things that we’re gonna look back on tomorrow and be really frustrated about. You don’t like talking what ifs, and that’s gonna be the situation we’re gonna be dealing with tomorrow.

“But the guys in the locker room, you just talk about there is only one option, it’s to move forward. It’s to get back to work. I feel we’ve got a great football team. We weren’t at our best today, and we’re gonna find out really how much we care about each other and what it looks like moving forward. 

“We’ve been tested different ways really in a lot of the games here this season, and this is a different type of test for us now and our response.”

DeBoer on what led to issues on getting off the field on third down…

“The quarterback did a nice job creating, and we’ve gotta continue to do a better job of just being disciplined and do our job. He keeps things alive with his feet, whether it was third down or just other downs where they converted some 3rd and Longs. I think those are the frustrating ones. So just great execution on their part. Obviously, we expect to do good on third down, too, because we’ve done great things on third down. It’s been more fourth down. 

“Guys certainly are frustrated about that, and we’ll look at it and understand that they attacked us in a few different ways. But tip of the hat to them. They made the throws, made the catches they needed to and got themselves in some manageable third downs. Early in the game, I think it was 6-for-7 or so right away. They just continued to wear on us, stayed on the football field. I see the time of possession, and that just continues to wear on your defense when you’re out there that long.”

DeBoer on how much he considered an onside kick after the final score…

“A lot of consideration. Just understanding everything with the timeouts and the 2-minute warning and all that. I just really felt we were gonna be in a good spot, even if they got one first down, depending on when that was. We would still be able to have a good amount of time to move down the field. I don’t think it was a matter of us being able to find guys and execute and get the ball down and score offensively. So it was just a matter of getting the ball back.

“Obviously, when it doesn’t go the way you want, you always look back and second guess. Maybe we should have tried to onside kick it, but I felt good about the decision at the time, and honestly, I still do right now.”

DeBoer on how damaging was the penalty for having two No. 2s on the field…

“We win as a team, we lose as a team. That’s all of us. We have communication and ways of making sure we’re all on the same page, and just what we called required certain guys to be on the field. It didn’t get circulated around to everyone. I mean, we’re well aware of that situation and just gotta do a better job. It’s like I said, we win as a team and we lose as a team. And those are the things that really hurt because I think kept the drive alive and then ended up scoring a touchdown. It was just that hump that we couldn’t quite get over a lot of the game, and that was an early one.”

DeBoer on Malachi Moore’s demeanor in the postgame locker room…

“Yeah, he was much better when he got in the locker room. Just the guy pours everything into what he does. It doesn’t make it OK, and we wanna be first-class in everything we do. And there’s a lot of guys that are really frustrated. I think the key is that we turn that frustration into positives moving forward and make sure we remember what we feel here tonight and remember that tomorrow when we show up and Tuesday and Wednesday and all season long.

“And so Malachi, I’m 100 percent confident he will do that. The frustration out there, again, comes from the work that he puts in, the belief that he puts in. There’s a couple guys that were critical from Day 1 when I got here that put their foot down and believed in this place, and he’s certainly one of them. And we are gonna continue to believe in him. He leaves it all on the football field, not just in every game but every day when we’re working, working out and practicing. He’s very vocal, and we need him to continue to be that way.”

DeBoer on how he approaches Moore refusing to leave the field after the penalty…

“As long as he’s not gonna get another penalty – I mean, I think it was the penalty on him. I guess I was looking at something else. I actually thought it was someone up front that got the penalty, and so just that communication, yeah. I’m assuming that’s what was happening there.

“… We’ll definitely talk about it if that’s what was going on there.”

DeBoer on time of possession, consistent struggles with allowing long drives…

“I think it’s happening different ways, right? It happened last week when there was that desperation from them to continue to go for it on fourth down. We were doing a good job on third down. This was a little different scenario. They just did a nice job on third down. I really don’t feel like they would have probably been pressing as much, especially given the score, letting their defense and do their thing. That’s what they’ve done through the first games that they’ve played is played team football, played field position. I think they’ve only gone for it three times, I think, all year going into today. 

“We needed to get off the field on third down. Again, there’s things in all phases that we can do better. We need to take care of the football. We need to get off the field on third down. And so we’re gonna own it as a team, and we’re gonna keep moving forward.”

DeBoer on his message to Jalen Milroe before the final drive…

“We go through 2-minute drill every week, and I just keep reminding him of all the scenarios. That was something that I know he was asking a lot about this week when he and I were meeting. But I just reminded him that him that most 2-minute drills, it isn’t about the clock, it’s about running out of downs. And as much as he’s gonna wanna push the ball down the field and he needs to feel that he can do that because we were making plays and we were getting guys open, he needed to make sure he always understood the down and distance situation and continued to make sure we were getting first downs five minutes to go or so. And so it was about that and getting first downs and then leading to a score. And I thought he did a great job. I thought he managed it, got us down there. We got the fourth down, we scored the touchdown.”

DeBoer on if Vanderbilt did anything surprising; how he felt Alabama adjusted…

“That’s their style. That’s what they’ve been doing. They’ve been controlling it. They’ve been making it close. They’re gonna run the clock down. They’re gonna shorten the game. We knew that that was gonna be the case. We talked about it all week long that that’s Coach Lea, and that’s why all week I said he’s done a great job of playing team football. And that’s exactly what they did.

“Just I think it comes down to be assignment sound. They put you in isolated spots where one guy’s gotta get the ball carrier down, and they’re just slippery enough, especially with the quarterback just being able to make people miss. He’s a tough kid and did a nice job when you got kind of running it to him, they threw just enough play-action and wrinkles at you to get you on the other spots with the other skill that was around him. 

“That fourth down was probably the tough one, the touchdown that they had. Just I thought we had a guy there and just throwing it up in the air and we were kind of spinning around. But that’s what you do. It’s fourth down and you throw it up when everything seems covered. Hats off to them, they made a play.”

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