Kalen DeBoer has faced his fair share of critics since taking on the challenge of replacing Nick Saban at Alabama. Despite winning his first college football playoff game with the Crimson Tide the heat hasn’t exactly been extinguished.
The latest critic of DeBoer’s came in the form of ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith when speaking to Paul Finebaum on Monday.
Smith has been a major advocate of Alabama for the better portion of a decade and has been invited to speak to the team by Saban in the past.
But during his appearance on the Paul Finebaum Show, Smith detailed that he is not a fan of DeBoer being the one to follow up Saban.
“I’m not a fan of Kalen DeBoer as a successor to Nick Saban,” Smith said. “I have no problem with him as a football coach. I’m fully aware of what he did at Washington. I’m fully aware of what he did before that. I know the man wins more than he loses. But when I think about Nick Saban, the man who I had the pleasure of getting to know, who flew me to Alabama on a couple of occasions to talk to the football team, to watch him in action, to watch what a standard bearer he was, how he lived on accountability.
“I just think when you follow that up with Kalen DeBoer, something was flagrantly missing.”
The major blemishes on DeBoer’s resume this past season were Alabama’s blow out losses to Florida State and Indiana, which were two games Smith believes that a Saban led team would have performed differently.
“But, there’s no way in hell you can convince me that a Nick Saban team was going to wave the white flag and basically just surrender to an ass kicking,” Smith said. “You’re not going to convince me that they are going to get their butt whipped on opening day against Florida State. I’m not going to believe that.”
Sandwiched between the pair of lopsided losses, Alabama had an impressive midseason run where it rattled off four straight ranked wins over Georgia, Vanderbilt, Missouri and Tennessee which helped it secure a spot in the SEC Championship. Smith acknowledged his successes yet still believes the Alabama brand has been hurt under DeBoer.
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Patrick Dowd is a Reporter for Touchdown Alabama Magazine. You can follow him on Twitter, via Pat_Dowd77
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