Kalen DeBoer dropped a quote after Alabama’s loss to Tennessee in 2024 that was a red flag, but everyone chose to ignore it
Alabama Crimson Tide head coach Kalen DeBoer may be in trouble in Tuscaloosa. DeBoer was already on thin ice with some fans entering the 2025 season after Alabama finished 9-4 last season, which included its first loss to Vanderbilt since 1984. After a season-opening 31-17 loss to Florida State, many Alabama fans are ready to […]
Alabama Crimson Tide head coach Kalen DeBoer may be in trouble in Tuscaloosa.
DeBoer was already on thin ice with some fans entering the 2025 season after Alabama finished 9-4 last season, which included its first loss to Vanderbilt since 1984.
After a season-opening 31-17 loss to Florida State, many Alabama fans are ready to move on from DeBoer.
The next few weeks will be critical for DeBoer if he wants to keep his job. The Crimson Tide has games coming up against Wisconsin, (at) Georgia, Vanderbilt, (at) Missouri, Tennessee, (at) South Carolina, LSU, and Oklahoma. Alabama probably needs to go 7-1 during that stretch to keep its College Football Playoff hopes alive. If it goes 5-2 (or worse), Alabama could enter the final week of the season against Auburn out of playoff contention. I’m not sure DeBoer will survive that scenario.
And I don’t know if that’s quite fair — DeBoer is a good coach who is in an impossible situation (following in Nick Saban’s footsteps). However, it’s also not a surprise that this is how things are going for DeBoer, considering a quote he made after Alabama’s loss to Tennessee last season that seemed to be a massive red flag.
Alabama’s Kalen DeBoer has never had to navigate a program through real adversity
After Alabama lost to Tennessee last season, DeBoer told his team that he’s not good at delivering speeches after a loss.
“I told them in there these are the speeches I’m not good at,” said DeBoer. “You gotta look inward first and make sure that everything you are doing is right. Anyone that you sense that has any type of questioning, you gotta to make sure you bring them with. The thing that I know is that with our guys, there are enough that know exactly what you are talking about to where it eats at them. We gotta to continue to mesh the vets with the new guys.”
Ultimately, the actual post-game speech isn’t a big deal. It can be difficult to have the right words after a tough loss. I’m not faulting DeBoer for being “not good” at post-game speeches after a loss. After all, that’s just one small moment in a team’s season-long journey.
That quote from DeBoer is a reminder that he’s never had to guide a team through real adversity.
DeBoer coached 116 college football games before he arrived at Alabama. He lost 12 of those games. DeBoer’s never had a rough stretch while he’s been a head coach. He’s never been in a situation where he’s had to deal with outside noise and the pressure of winning at a place like Alabama. This is the first time he’s ever experienced any of this.
We would all be foolish to expect him to handle it perfectly.
DeBoer, like anyone who goes through adversity for the first time, will learn from all of this. He’ll be a better football coach because of this tough stretch at Alabama. But will he get the chance to right the ship at Alabama?
We’ll see. I know the fact that folks in the media are already talking about DeBoer’s buyout and how Alabama can handle it probably isn’t a good sign.
I’ve said from the beginning that DeBoer was probably going to fail at Alabama. It’s not that I think he’s a bad coach (he’s obviously not); it’s that I’ve never felt he’d be allowed to be the real Kalen DeBoer at Alabama.
He’s trying to be who Alabama fans expect him to be. And that’s not what made DeBoer successful. Doing things “the Alabama way” or “the Nick Saban way” was never going to work for DeBoer. The only way this was going to work was if DeBoer was allowed to do things 100 percent the Kalen DeBoer way.
But I think we all knew that wasn’t going to be the case for DeBoer in Tuscaloosa. Bama fans saw Nick Saban do it his way and win championship after championship for nearly two decades. They understandably weren’t ready to give that way up. But they forgot that it wasn’t up to them.
Tennessee Volunteers News
‘I’d ask Joe Milton and Hendon Hooker, they know the truth’ – Connor Stalions speaks on rumor he gave Vols’ signs to South Carolina
Disgraced former Michigan Wolverines staff member Connor Stalions spoke out this week about the theory that he shared the Tennessee Vols’ signs with the South Carolina Gamecocks in 2022. The idea is that Stalions, who stole signals from other programs by attending games in person while he worked for Michigan, shared Tennessee’s defensive signals with […]
