Nick Saban turns up the heat on Kalen DeBoer and Alabama in latest comments about the state of Crimson Tide football

Coach Saban knows that things have to look better in year three of the Kalen DeBoer era.

Rob Gregson — NFL News Writer
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Nick Saban joins the Pat McAfee show to talk college football and the future of the Alabama Crimson Tide, 1/7/2025.
Pat

By all accounts, year two of Kalen DeBoer’s tenure with the Alabama Crimson Tide was an improvement. The Tide went from missing the CFP entirely to winning the SEC’s regular season and winning a game in the College Football Playoff.

The issue is, in two of Alabama’s last three games, and even in the playoff win against Oklahoma for a period of time, Alabama looked lifeless. It happened against the Georgia Bulldogs in the SEC Championship, and again in the Rose Bowl, on a much larger scale. Nick Saban knows that’s not acceptable.

Nick Saban turns up the heat on Kalen DeBoer

“This is a tough transition, especially in this environment that we live in, in college football in terms of players coming and going,” said Saban via the Pat McAfee Show. “I think there were like 26 players that got in a portal when I retired, so that’s a lot to overcome for anybody. And it would have been a lot to overcome for even one of the guys who formerly coached for me.”

“I fully support Greg Byrne and what he decided to do and how he’s done it. I’m hoping they get the ship going in the right direction here. It’s not bad to get in the playoffs and finish in the final eight, but not the expectation around here, which is tough to live up to sometimes.”

The reason this whole conversation began was because McAfee referenced Saban’s coaching tree. All four remaining teams in the CFP have a head coach who was once a part of Nick Saban’s staff at Alabama.

Yet, when coach Saban retired, AD Byrne and the school decided to go away from Saban’s tree. That doesn’t mean it was a bad decision, but when Curt Cignetti is out here saying that he learned more in one year with coach Saban than he did in over two decades of coaching, it makes you wonder.

DeBoer and the Tide have it all out in front of them. However, between a brutal five-week stretch during the 2026 season and the amount of turnover the Tide has seen at the key positions like QB and OL, it will take Kalen DeBoer’s best job yet.

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