Kalen DeBoer will never be Nick Saban and that’s ok

Mandatory Credit: David Leong-Imagn Images

Despite steady improvement from his second year at Alabama, it feels as if the pressure is mounting on head coach Kalen DeBoer as he enters year three.

A pair of blowout losses in the SEC Championship and College Football Playoff are the culprits of the good will DeBoer earned from his critics during the Crimson Tide’s run of four straight ranked wins in the middle of the season. Some of the criticism is rightfully deserved as the team looked physically and strategically overmatched in both cases.

But what’s resulted since have been cries throughout the offseason that DeBoer is not the man for the job and the core of the argument appears to be built around a comparison to his predecessor Nick Saban.

Saban’s teams were consistently prepared whether it were games against Georgia or Mercer and also physically equal or superior every time Alabama ran out of the tunnel. However, that’s what makes comparing Saban and DeBoer all the more ridiculous.

Kalen DeBoer will never be Nick Saban and that’s ok, because there will never be another Nick Saban in college football.

Even if never is too definitive of a statement it was always ridiculous to expect DeBoer to take the program and run with it.

First off, since Saban retired the competitive landscape of college football has completely evolved with a narrowed focus on NIL funding in recruiting and the transfer portal. No matter how good of a coach DeBoer was coming in, Alabama is still a notch down in the cash game.

Yet the Crimson Tide have remained competitive throughout DeBoer’s run and has consistently gotten the better of Georgia both at home and on the road in his first two seasons.

It still doesn’t erase the other poor losses to the unranked programs like Vanderbilt, Oklahoma and Florida State but no hand off has ever gone smoothly.

In fact, DeBoer’s nine win season in 2024 is the first time a head coach has won over seven games in his first season in the program since Ray Perkins won eight games in 1983 replacing Bear Bryant. Back then it’s likely to be assumed that the transfer portal was a bit less saturated when a coach retires.

When looking at the full body of work, the answer on whether DeBoer is the rightful heir to Saban is far less definitive and perhaps trending more towards a yes.

Right now it’s simply too early to tell. Year three was the magic number for Saban who won his first national title at Alabama but even then that is a lofty goal for DeBoer and any coach in college football for that matter.

Just look at the other previous coaches who’ve won it all.

It took Kirby Smart six years at Georgia to win a national title, eight for Dabo Swinney at Clemson, seven for Ryan Day at Ohio State and nine years for Jim Harbaugh when he was at Michigan. The outliers of recent years include Ed Orgeron who won in year three at LSU and defending champ Curt Cignetti who was in year two at Indiana.

Orgeron would be fired two years later, and time will only tell if Cignett’s run can be sustained.

There is no guarantee that DeBoer will capture one next year or in the next three, but given that the Crimson Tide have very much remained relevant shouldn’t go unnoticed and the comparisons to Saban have to stop.

The days of Alabama appearing in five national championships in six years (with four wins) isn’t coming back and won’t be repeated by another program. It’s a standard that can only be upheld by one, and he’s predicting games instead of coaching nowadays.

Will DeBoer be the head coach for the next decade? Who knows, but he deserves more credit, grace and time than he appears to be getting from the outside.

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Patrick Dowd is a Reporter for Touchdown Alabama Magazine. You can follow him on Twitter, via Pat_Dowd77