Alabama coaching search: Crimson Tide expected to hire Nick Saban’s replacement, per reports
Alabama is expected to hire Washington head coach Kalen DeBoer to replace the recently retired Nick Saban, according to reports from 247Sports, the Associated Press, and ESPN.
DeBoer, 49, comes to Tuscaloosa after two seasons at Washington where he went 25-3 and took the Huskies to the College Football Playoff National Championship. DeBoer has four years of head coaching experience at the FBS level — two at Fresno State before Washington — but he also spent five years as a head coach at the NAIA level, where he took teams to four NAIA national championships and won three as the coach at Sioux Falls.
This past season, DeBoer led Washington to a program-record 14 wins, a Pac-12 championship, and a Sugar Bowl win over Texas in the CFP semifinals. UW lost to Michigan in the title game, 34-13.
He and offensive coordinator Ryan Grubb orchestrated one of the best passing offenses in the country, landing quarterback Michael Penix Jr. in New York City as a Heisman finalist and producing two 1,000-yard wide receivers. One of those receivers, Rome Odunze, is expected to be a top-10 pick in the 2024 NFL Draft.
A season ago, in his first year as a coach at the Power Five level, DeBoer piloted Washington to an 11-2 finish and an Alamo Bowl win over Texas. Along the way, Washington beat four ranked opponents and closed the year with seven consecutive wins.
The Huskies stretched their win streak to 21 games during the 2023 season.
Across his two seasons, DeBoer went 14-0 at home with Washington and 10-1 against ranked opponents.
But he has no coaching experience in the South. And he’ll take over the Alabama program with gigantic shoes to fill.
Arguably the greatest coach of all time, Saban has led Alabama to 16 consecutive 10-win seasons — an NCAA record. Under his stewardship, the program won six national championships, appeared in 10 SEC Championship games with nine wins, and was a fixture in the four-team CFP. The standard is tremendously high.
But the roster is loaded with talent. DeBoer will now look to tailor his offense to fit the skillset of Jalen Milroe, who finished sixth in Heisman voting during the 2023 season. Or he could seek out another quarterback in the transfer portal.
For now, the attention will shift to the staff DeBoer builds around him. When he took the Washington job, he filled out his 10-man staff with six assistants who followed him from Fresno State — including Grubb — as well as one other assistant who’d worked with him previously. He retained two assistants already on the UW staff and made one hire with no prior connections to himself or the school.
Grubb becomes the focus after Alabama briefly tried to lure him away from Seattle last offseason.
The two are close and have long worked together. Grubb worked as offensive line coach under DeBoer from 2007-09 at Sioux Falls, joined him at Eastern Michigan (2014-16), and followed him to Fresno State when DeBoer first took a job on staff. Grubb stayed as the coordinator at Fresno when DeBoer left for the OC job at Indiana, and stayed on staff once Fresno hired DeBoer back as head coach in 2020.
Should he follow DeBoer to Alabama, the Crimson Tide would be landing an assistant widely regarded as one of the best offensive minds in football.