re: Alabama Back to Pre-Saban Irrelevance – What Signs Are You Seeing?

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What other signs of the impending collapse have you noticed?

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They've become Washington-South under CKD

Maybe the signs were already there in Nick's last season, they struggled for a lot of those wins after the Texas loss whereas in past years they just pounded people into the ground

This time it's different as they're an effective passing team like they were in Washington's 2023 season but the run game is non-existent and when those Kalen DeBoer teams played vintage Saban-type teams like Michigan and Indiana, they got belt to arse and hit bottom with -3 rushing yards against UGA in the SEC title game

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Gen Patton

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you actually bring up a solid point I haven't seen mentioned before. Obviously there's been lots of talk about their declin from saban to now but it's bene mostly either generalities (they suck now) or just win/loss records, which is objective and black and white. But as you hit on, you can also see the slow shift even with saban there that goes something like this:

Mostly kill people/only a few close wins/what minimal losses they are close
-Most of Sabans' whole tenure through 2020

Whoop most people/close wins start to increase in number/losses get a bit bigger
-In 2021 they had narrow single digit escapes against multiple teams they were better than, including one in OT. They had a loss to an unranked team and lost the natty by 15 points
-2022 more close single digit wins, and now multiple regular season losses for the first time in a while
-2023 even more close single digit wins and again multiple losses. First time posting 3 consecutive seasons with at least 2 losses since 2006-2008

Beatings are less frequent/losses increase in frequency/losses increase in severity
-2024 avoided a lot of narrow wins, aside from a head scratcher against SC. There were however 3 regular season losses including one of the worst of this century against vanderbilt. There was a 21 point beatdown against OU, and ended the season with loss #4
-2025 saw 3 losses by at least 2 touchdowns. Of the 4 total losses, half of them were by at least 21 points. 4 wins by single digits, half of which were against unranked teams.


Obviously the deboar era bama isn't close to saban era, but there's actually been a pretty steady and noticeable downswing beginning late in the saban tenure and continuing to get steadily worse up to and including right now.