re: How would you grade Deboer’s first year?

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It's just the nature of two of those losses that has been most disappointing to me.

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Yep. Could've easily lived with losses to Georgia and Tennessee this year with a playoff berth, and maybe make some noise in the playoffs.

But losing to Vanderbilt and Oklahoma - 2 teams around .500 - embarrassing tbh.

Especially getting blown out by Oklahoma with everything on the line late in the season. One of the worst losses I can remember.

B-

Specifically dude to the lack of discipline/focus. See critical penalties and unforced errors early in the season.

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So Washington has out recruited Alabama?

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Apparently so. These recruiting sites are a joke

That Washington team last year would've stomped a mudhole in this team's arse

Yep.
That Oklahoma shite looks bad on a playoff resume.
It also looks bad on deboer as a potential nfl coach.

I mean Bama having the most talented team on paper doesn’t mean they that have the most talented team

Otherwise Auburn, USC post Carroll, UF post Meyer, etc. would’ve been top 10 teams since they had multiple top 10 recruiting classes

Otherwise Bama would have the most or one of the most talented OL, WR room, and RB rooms in the country each of the past 3 years. But that’s certainly not the case and you know it

B+

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I go back and forth between B- and C+. It’s about what I expected. I think I initially said I could see 8-4 or 10-2 being his first year regular season record. So 9-3 is right in the middle.

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This is where I am too. I'm glad that we beat 2/3 rivals. The Georgia win was a real high. But the lows were really low.

People obsessed about Vandy because Vandy isn’t “supposed” to be good, but they are competent this year and they have a gamer at QB and they caught us with our pants down, and I got over that one very quickly although I will always hate it.

The one I haven’t gotten over is Oklahoma, with what was at stake that complete bed crapping by everyone in our traveling party was inexcusable and unacceptable.

I keep saying this, but what DeBoer has to get through his skull is that there are never, ever going to be any gimmes in this conference and it is imperative that you are ready to do business in each of the 8 league games. It really looked like he and his staff thought all we had to do is show up in Norman.

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I give him a B or B-

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Agreed

Positives:

* Team defense improved over the course of the season despite a lot of injuries. They had deficiencies but basically only cost the team one game all season and it was in the first half of the season.

* Beat several important teams in our recruiting battles this year and down the line: Auburn, Georgia, and LSU.

* 9 wins in the first year at a program is not bad. Especially considering that Alabama's schedule was very tough and couple of the supposed "filler" conference games ended up being quality opponents.

Negatives

* Offensive production trended downward over the course of the season in many metrics.

* Team discipline was not great this season. This was a trend that started under Saban but a new staff has seemingly only made it worse.

* Turnovers became a huge problem in conference play. Ball security has been an issue. Quarterback making bad decisions for the direction of the pass is arguably the bigger turnover problem. How much of that can be improved by a new quarterback who is a more natural passer?

Grade: B-

It was a good season but not a great one. The success metric in the 12-team playoff era is to make the playoffs and beat your biggest rivals. Losing to Tennessee the way we lost it was miserable. The other two losses are miserable losses to mediocre football teams. Those two bad losses played us right out of the playoffs. Beating UGA, LSU, and Auburn plus nabbing two quality wins against USC and Mizzou is commendable though. Ultimately, DeBoer likely went 1 out of 3 on the success metric: beat Auburn, lost to Tennessee, missed playoffs.