Even with the "Wild West" portal, Saban left him a stacked roster and an incredible brand. Plus he road Saban's coattails to a #2 ranked recruiting class. DeBoer had just completed a CFP season at Washington albeit against the final year of Pac12 competition so more was probably expected.

B+ is very generous.

0 ...

Report Post

Posted by LuckyTiger57

Member since Dec 2015

1717 posts

Posted on 1/25/26 at 7:06 am to BlackCloud

I give Kalen DeBoer a B just for coming in behind the footsteps of Nick Saban. There was a lot of players leaving and almost no hope of them fielding a really good team, and catching up with NIL etc. I think he did better than expected his first two years. Expectations this year for him to win big this year will be brutal.

0 ...

Report Post

Posted by TheTideMustRoll

Birmingham, AL

Member since Dec 2009

10429 posts

Posted on 1/25/26 at 7:29 am to WG_Dawg

quote:
Kirby and lane elevated their programs to New heights. Book is still out on deboers very young tenure obviously, but at the moment he is trending in the wrong direction.

DeBoer's tenure is actually trending very slightly upwards over a small sample size. He went from 3 regular season losses with no SECCG or CFP appearance in his first season to 2 regular season losses with a SECCG and CFP appearance in his second season. Not that there aren't concerns, of course there are, to wit:

-He does have the occasional inexplicable loss where we look completely unprepared. No real defense of this, we just have to hope it's a relic of the regime change and goes away.

-He did get blown away by Georgia and Indiana in the postseason. Ugly losses but to have even gotten such a limited team to those games was an accomplishment. Besides, Oregon also got blown away by Indiana and I don't see anyone here calling for Lanning's' job.

-The offense this year was abysmal so far as running the ball. No sugarcoating this one but he has let Kapilovic go so he's hopefully making the right moves to fix it.

I think any rational Bama fan will tell you that we are cautiously optimistic with DeBoer but this coming season is going to tell the tale of his tenure here. If we roll out another offense that can't run the ball, he won't survive.

1 ...

Report Post

Posted by WG_Dawg

Member since Jun 2004

89812 posts

Posted on 1/25/26 at 7:36 am to TheTideMustRoll

quote:
TheTideMustRoll

I don't disagree with anything you said. But I think if you take all that and throw it in a hat and assign a grade to it, I just don't see how you can call that B-territory.

Nobody is (or should have) expected him to just pick right up for saban, that'd be impossible. But the losses and poor play indicate that not only has he not kept the car on cruise but again things are trending down. I don't think "making playoffs" is really a great barometer of success considering there's 12 teams in it. He has had some really high profile wins to be sure, but also some absolute WTF head scratching losses. In addition to 8 losses in two years. That's concerning.

Page 1 2 3