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Nick Saban never lost a game like this.
Seriously.
Saban was a perfect 17-0 in season openers while guiding the Alabama program. His teams were always prepared and ready to go in season openers. They had practiced every scenario and survived grueling practices in the Alabama heat that they couldn’t wait to let out the aggression on the opposing team. They were ferocious and evoked fear from teams that had to line up against them.
Kalen DeBoer’s Alabama team doesn’t have that aggression. It may never have it if the lackluster, soft, embarrassing, pathetic performance against Florida State is any indicator.
Florida State, a team that won two games and never scored more than 20 points in a game last season, thoroughly handled the No. 8 Crimson Tide, 31-17. Led by first-year starting quarterback TY SIMPSONAlabama’s offense was an anemic mess. The defense was similarly outclassed with Gus Malzahn’s power to stymie Alabama still well in order. Boneheaded penalties and mental errors when Alabama could least afford them, a staple of last season’s disappointing team, were damaging again. Alabama players said the disrespect of FSU quarterback Thomas Castellanos’ offseason trash talk would be directly addressed, and instead the Tide gave up 230 rushing yards and four touchdowns.
Castellanos was right: Alabama didn’t have Saban to save them anymore.
DeBoer has coached a grand total of 14 games as Alabama’s head coach and yet he already has more embarrassing losses than Saban did during his entire 17-season run in Tuscaloosa. Saban had a more than 100-game win streak at one point against unranked opponents before Texas A&M finally ended it in 2021. How’s this for a killer stat: DeBoer has as many losses to unranked opponents in 14 games as Saban had during his entire tenure. Even worse, DeBoer and Alabama were double-digit betting favorites in every single one of those losses.
It is inherently unfair to keep writing columns like this about DeBoer failing in a way Saban never did — but this is what he signed up for. This is what the $10 million contract that made him one of the game’s top 10 highest-paid coaches was supposed to prevent.
He didn’t have to choose this path. He had a contract sitting on his desk that would have paid him $9.2 million this season to stay at Washingtonaccording to public records obtained by CBS Sports, but he wanted to follow the GOAT. He wanted his chance to show the SEC what his offense could accomplish.
It was a potentially awkward fit from the start, the South Dakota native who had never seriously recruited the SEC now thrust into one of the most pressurized jobs in the sport. You have to be wired a certain kind of way to really succeed in the SEC the way Saban, Kirby Smart and others have, and DeBoer doesn’t look up to the task. Program insiders told CBS Sports this offseason that DeBoer truly believes in his abilities to out-scheme and out-think opponents and prioritizes it over the mental toughness Saban used to drill into his teams.
I asked one source, who worked at Alabama under Saban, about what the issue with DeBoer and Alabama was, and the answer made perfect sense. “The only explanation I can give you is this,” the source said, “you have to be a different breed to survive in the SEC.”
Through 14 games, DeBoer has learned that the hard way. What worked in the Pac-12 and made him such a hot coaching candidate in the first place hasn’t translated to the hard-fought SEC where there are no gimme games and every team has NFL-caliber talent. DeBoer guiding Washington to a title game appearance shows he’s not a bad coach; he just doesn’t look like the right coach at Alabama.
There were plenty around the sport who questioned at the time why he would leave Washington for Alabama. Brian Griffin, who spent last season as Maryland’s chief of staff, spent a week out at Washington with DeBoer’s staff and thought the former Huskies coach had it made.
“I don’t even know if those guys knew what the word pressure was,” Griffin told me. “I think they were living this fantasy of here we are, we’re going to win games, let me show you the locker room, everything was so casual and peaceful. I remember thinking to myself, ‘God, these guys got it great.’ There’s no pressure here.”
Those days must feel like a lifetime ago now. The pressure just ratcheted up in a way DeBoer has never experienced before after the loss to the unranked Seminoles. It’s too soon to say DeBoer is on the hot seatbut you better believe “DeBoer buyout” is going to be a hot Google search term in the state of Alabama (it’s around $63 million). It didn’t help DeBoer’s case, either, that former Alabama quarterback Julian Sayin out-dueled Arch Manning to beat No. 1 Texas earlier in the day, and that Florida State coach Mike Norvell, the other finalist to replace Saban, was the one to beat him.
This was already a playoff-or-bust season for the Crimson Tide and there was so much hype billowing out of Tuscaloosa this offseason that Alabama would be back this season. Those around the program were very bullish about the talent they had coming back and that the issues they had a year ago had been rooted out. They loved what new offensive coordinator Ryan Grubb could do with Simpson, a more natural fit in DeBoer’s preferred style of offense than Jalen Milroe was last season. The receivers, which struggled to get separation against FSU, were supposed to be a strength.
The offensive operation didn’t look anywhere close to improved down in Tallahassee — not having running back Jam Miller certainly didn’t help — and there isn’t much time to get it fixed. Look at some of the opponents still on Alabama’s schedule: No. 5 GeorgiaNo. 9 LSU, No. 13 South CarolinaNo. 18 and No. 24 Tennesseeplus the Iron Bowl at Auburn. The playoff dream isn’t dead, but man, that path looks almost impossible to navigate from what we saw of Alabama in its season-opening clunker.
Alabama has the No. 2 most talented roster in college football, according to 247Sportsand yet looks increasingly destined to lose four or more games. These are the kind of losses that turn a fanbase that treated you like a conquering hero when you first arrived in Tuscaloosa to one that will run you out of town.
It’s rarely smart to overreact to Week 1 results, but there’s no overstating how damaging this was for DeBoer and the Alabama fanbase. The goodwill he built up has evaporated. The calls for him to make coaching changes are nigh.
The time to prove he can be the guy is running out.
