Following Saturday’s loss to Florida State many are speculating that Coach Kalen DeBoer is in the hot seat. The post-Saban era in Tuscaloosa is upon us and so far, it has been a wild ride for the Crimson Tide.  When Nick Saban retired in 2024, Alabama decided to reach out to the head coach of the National Champion runners up, Washington’s Kalen DeBoer. Coming off an incredible one loss season, many fans predicted this would be the next great Alabama head coach. The Alabama faithful always have one expectation, the playoffs or bust. Having just been there, Deboer believed he could take this team and win the 2025 National Championship. There was just one problem, putting beliefs into action. 

The first season was filled with ups and downs, but way more downs than ups. In week 2 at home against University of South Florida, Alabama struggled to pull away in a game that should have been a blowout from the first whistle.  The ending score could lead you to believe it was, in fact, a blowout, but the tape shows a different story. Until the final 4 minutes, the game was too close for comfort. After that game Alabama seemed to show that it had just been a bad day for them when they demolished Wisconsin and won against their top rival, Georgia, earning them the number 1 seed. Then, it all took a turn going into week six on the road against Vanderbilt. In an upset win, Vanderbilt beat the Crimson Tide 40-35. At the time, Vanderbilt had never beat a number one team and hadn’t beat Alabama in 30 years. The next week, the team got a slim bounce back win against a red-hot South Carolina team to boost them up for the next week. 

The next game was a big one for Bama, the third Saturday in October, a rivalry game between Alabama and the Tennessee Volunteers, a must win game for Kalen Deboer. This was a team that Nick Saban only lost to once in his tenure in Tuscaloosa. This game would set the tone for the next few years of the Deboer era. Alabama fought as hard as they could and lost by a touchdown to the Volunteers in Knoxville.  Even after a tough defeat to the Vols, Alabama still looked well on their way to the college football playoffs with a shut-out win against Missouri, a win against LSU, and, in SEC fashion, a win against an FCS team in the month of November. With two games left in the regular season, the only teams that stood in their way of the playoffs were a struggling Oklahoma and an Auburn team that was coming off a huge win. In the game against Oklahoma, Alabama showed no life and it was all Sooners from the opening kick. Alabama was defeated 24-3 at Oklahoma. The week after, they played their instate rival, Auburn, in the Iron Bowl to end the regular season. Despite a huge Overtime upset win against Texas A&M, Alabama was just too tough for them to beat, with Auburn losing by 2 scores. 

With the regular season over, the three-loss Alabama team was still hoping for a playoff bid with the College football playoffs expanding from 4 teams to 12 teams in the 2024 season. When their name wasn’t called it caused an uproar in the state of Alabama with fans believing their team should be in the playoffs. Nonetheless, Alabama would still play Michigan in the 2024 ReliaQuest Bowl in Tampa Bay, Florida. The game was on December 31, 2024 exactly 364 days earlier on January 1, 2024, Michigan beat Alabama to punch their ticket to the National Championship. Michigan was a struggling team during the season, started off ranked but ended up losing 5 games and in the end was unranked; despite the rough season they were still able to extend their win streak on the would-be National Champions, The Ohio State Buckeyes. The hope was that Alabama would beat Michigan and end their calendar year the opposite way it started.  Sadly, despite all the expert picks believing that this Alabama team should be in the playoffs and they would win against Michigan; they got upset 19-13 and the Kalen Deboer inaugural season was over. Their record was 9-4 with losses to Vanderbilt, Tennessee, Oklahoma, and Michigan, but despite that, they had quality wins against South Carolina, Georgia, LSU, and Mizzou.

With his first season behind him, Deboer started looking towards the future and his second year. With returning all-freshman receiver Ryan Williams as their next big superstar, Deboer had hopes for a better second season. With 25 players entering the transfer portal, including starting running back Justice Haynes and Starting db DeVonta Smith, things looked grim for the upcoming season. It hurt Alabama’s prospects when star quarterback Jalen Milroe and two other Alabama stars, Tyler Booker and Jihaad Campbell, entered the NFL draft. In total Alabama lost 32 players between the draft, portal, and players out of eligibility. Kalen Deboer hit the transfer portal pretty moderately only bringing in 10 offensive and defensive players, including Miami receiver Isaiah Horton, to hopefully make a difference for the next season. The position that was untouched was quarterback, putting his trust in 3rd year quarterback Ty Simpson. There were many doubts that he could be the next great quarterback at Alabama but Deboer still put his trust in him. 

As the next official season started, the first game up was Florida State, a team who only won 2 games the previous year. To add fuel to the first, FSU transfer quarterback Thomas Castellanos trashed talked Alabama months before the game. Experts thought this game would be an easy win in the Crimson Tide’s favor but nobody knew the revamp Florida State had had over the offseason to make sure they did not underperform for the second consecutive year. Castellanos backed up his talk in their first game and led the Seminoles to a 31-17 victory over the Crimson Tide. That leads to now where, for the first time in 23 years, Alabama has lost a season opener leading people to call for the firing of Kalen Deboer. 

In 16 years, Nick Saban had 4 losses to an unranked team with Alabama. With only 14 games at Alabama, Deboer already has 4. 4 unranked losses in 14 games doesn’t sound like rules for firing for any other school, but this is Alabama. The tradition is to win and anything less than a National Championship is a sub-par year for their fanbase. In the SEC, if you do not have a double digit wins season, you are looked at as a middle of the pack team. For Alabama, however, to have only a 9 win year after being the frontrunners of the SEC means that they are becoming a laughingstock in college football.  Kalen Deboer needs to step up from this loss, grow, and move on, but does he have a grip on his team to make that change? Videos have been swirling the internet of Alabama players recording TikTok’s and not practicing as a team during pre-games, which has raised questions about DeBoer’s coaching style and the team’s discipline. Both his record and coaching style are being held against the new coach, while the fanbase and the Tide tradition demand excellence. 

All coaches have their struggles when they move to new teams and new conferences, but when you are the coach at Alabama, struggles will be held against you until you win. Is it fair to put Deboer in the hot seat this early on? Does he have what it takes? Is it DeBover?