Kalen DeBoer's pitch to Alabama players considering the portal

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. – Alabama’s director of athletics Greg Byrne met with the Crimson Tide football team shortly after Nick Saban announced he was retiring and said to give him 72 hours to find a new head coach. He said that because with Saban’s retirement, the transfer portal opened for another 30 days, allowing players to weigh their options after a change.

Byrne delivered a new coach, Washington’s Kalen DeBoer, in 49 hours.

One of DeBoer’s top priorities now that he is in Tuscaloosa is to retain an Alabama roster that won 12 games and an SEC championship last season. But Byrne and members of the Crimson Tide athletic department moved quickly on Wednesday to get in front of the players.

“We had an entire plan, to the hour, of what we were going do,” Byrne said. “We had been working on that for quite a while. We had a few folks from our department and football program that were boots on the ground, and as soon as I got done with the leadership team before I left town, I met with the entire football staff because that’s the right thing to do.

“And then we went upstairs to the conference room by my office and I had about eight people from our department in there, and I said ‘You guys are going to divide up the roster, and you’re going to stay in constant contact, OK, and not wait for them to come to you but you go to them.’

“The messaging that I had to the leadership team, the messaging that I had to our team was here’s the people that you need to contact with any questions that you have. I talked to a number of the guys on our team through the process, too, talked to a lot of our former players, too, when time allowed. So all that was just saying we’ve got to stay together through this thing.”

Since Saban retired Wednesday afternoon, three players have either entered the transfer portal or said they will do so, including starting wide receiver Isaiah Bond. That brings the total number of Alabama players in the portal to 20 since the Dec. 4 transfer window opened.

Other players have hinted on social media that they will be back for Year 1 of DeBoer’s tenure as head coach, including receiver Emmanuel Henderson – this coming on the day after DeBoer met with the team for the first time after arriving in Tuscaloosa on Friday night.

DeBoer was asked Saturday how real the threat of other teams poaching players is right now.

“It’s real strong, really strong,” DeBoer said. “I don’t care where you’re at, if you see an opportunity to add to your team – and especially if I might hurt one of your competitors – you’re going to do that. Unfortunately, that’s the situation that college football, college athletics is in right now where those things can happen pretty quickly and many cases, there’s not much as far as consequences if you’re not handling things the right way.”

As Alabama looks to hold its roster together after the retirement of a legendary coach, the guy replacing him shared his pitch to UA’s players who might be thinking about transferring.

“I think I tried to show them a little bit of my vision, but I also told them that I understand you can’t buy into my vision until you truly know me,” DeBoer said. “So just give me a chance. Give me a chance to show you a few of the things. I’m going to listen to you. I’m going to meet you where you’re at right now and try to show them through some proof of things that have happened, whether it’s at Washington. We haven’t gotten into much beyond that. 

“But what this will look like, how great it will be out there on the football field because of what we’re doing schematically, because of the people that are going to be around you as you show up in the weight room for that workout and the people that are around you from a coaching staff standpoint developing you. Show them that their development and what we’ve done with guys moving on to the NFL in the past and how we do that, that it’s special.”

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