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O’Gara: Kalen DeBoer isn’t Nick Saban, but make no mistake, he belongs here
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DALLAS — It was surreal.
At the podium with an Alabama background, Kalen DeBoer stood. At the SEC Network desk with his analyst chair turned, Nick Saban sat. Successor, predecessor. Apprentice and master? Not so much. Kalen DeBoer is coming off a national championship berth and is 104-12 overall and 27-9 in 4 seasons as an FBS head coach.
Of course, the elephant in the room (pun intended), is that as great as DeBoer’s résumé is, there’s only 1 Saban … and he’s not at the podium anymore. It was always going to be surreal to watch anyone replace Saban.
But the guy he got? You can tell he belongs, no matter how different he is from his predecessor.
It’s not just that DeBoer doesn’t come off annoyed when he gets asked questions about the greatness of Saban. It’s not even that he comes off cool and collected at the podium, though he did admit there’s been a significant adjustment in his first job south of Carbondale, Ill.
“I’ve sweat a lot more,” DeBoer said. “It’s hot.”
To DeBoer’s credit, he doesn’t show it. He instead shows that he can take everything in stride. You know, like Saban did. There is a similarity that DeBoer sees in himself and Saban.
“I’ve heard it from our guys. I know Coach Saban just poured into these guys. He loved them. He believed in them. He pushed them to be their best,” DeBoer said. “I think you always look at — I mean, every coach is different. We all have different personalities. We all have our styles, especially when you’ve been doing it for a while in this profession you kind of have the things that you really like to do and favor.
“But in the end, the most important things, I think a lot of those are probably pretty similar more than they’re different. Pouring into the guys and helping them and pushing them to be at their best, holding them accountable and expecting a high level of discipline while also trying to build a brotherhood and a family that exists through great team chemistry to be great on the football field when it matters most.”
Buy-in, DeBoer has. Or rather, he earned. Alabama only had 2 post-spring transfers.
The 3 most important returnees were the 3 player representatives who were in Dallas. Jalen Milroe, Tyler Booker and Malachi Moore all met with DeBoer upon his arrival and tried to give Alabama players a reason to stay.
When DeBoer got to Tuscaloosa, he met with Alabama’s leadership group at 9 p.m. For over an hour, he set out to learn about the program. DeBoer admitted he even took notes because “these guys have been here longer than I have.”
“He just wanted to get everything done in terms of what the traditions are, things y’all like, don’t like,” Moore said. “He really just wanted our opinion on stuff and how things ran.”
DeBoer might not have won over everyone upon his arrival — the 30-day transfer portal window gets everyone who endures a coaching change — but for someone like Moore, the simple act of signing up to be a Saban successor worked in his favor.
“I knew that I was gonna have respect for whoever stood up and took the job after Coach Saban,” Moore said. “I told Coach DeBoer that when he first got here, how much respect I had for him coming in behind the greatest football coach of all time and leaving a team that just went to the national championship and coming here and taking on the job of continuing the Alabama legacy.
“That takes a lot of guts, and it says a lot about him as a man.”
DeBoer’s tenure won’t be defined by his initial presence, nor will it be defined by how he comes across in front of the media masses, which he admitted “was something else.” It’ll be defined by how he handles failure, though failure will be defined differently in the 12-team Playoff era.
At the same time, it’s Alabama. It’s a 1-of-1 standard. It could break a coach’s confidence, or it could all be taken in stride. Booker believes it’ll be the latter.
“You can definitely tell that he’s the right guy for this job,” Booker said. “He never (shied) away from a challenge. He’s taken this challenge head-on. He understands he’s succeeding the greatest coach of all time. I know whoever took this job had to be someone who’s very confident in himself.
“He’s definitely lived up to who I thought he was.”
It remains to be seen whether DeBoer will live up to who Alabama fans think he is. If they think he’s an outsider who can’t recruit because of his lack of southern roots, well, his No. 2 class for 2025 would probably squelch that argument. It’s not out of the realm of possibility that DeBoer does what Saban did countless times in his career: finish with the No. 1 class.
In a not-so-stunning development, DeBoer was well aware of that emphasis when he signed up for the job.
“I knew the intensity level that existed here in the SEC, and I think across college football it’s just so competitive,” DeBoer said. “I understand that it certainly is different.”
How different will 2024 be for Alabama? What feels inevitable with the DeBoer offense that passed the ball 38 times per game at Washington in 2023? Even if Milroe doesn’t lead some pass-heavy offense, it’s safe to say it’s an offensive transformation.
Booker and several members of the Alabama offense went over to DeBoer’s house to eat and watch some 2023 Washington games. The goal was simple — become comfortable with one another in this new DeBoer era.
“Not one day has he come in trying to be Nick Saban,” Booker said. “That’s the best thing he’s done so far. He’s been him this whole time.”
Saban’s influence on the program won’t fade anytime soon, even as he transitions into more of a behind-the-scenes role at Alabama to go along with his ESPN analyst duties. Saban kicked off the week by making an SEC Championship prediction that didn’t include Alabama. He picked Georgia and Texas to get to Atlanta, which made its way to the Alabama players.
How did they feel about not getting that preseason love from their former coach?
“He would get mad at me if I felt that way about what he said because he always used to say, ‘Don’t let some guy that lives in their mom’s basement determine how you feel,’” Booker said with a smile. “I’m not gonna let a guy who played golf all day determine how I feel.”
Funny, yet surreal.
Connor O'Gara is the senior national columnist for Saturday Down South. He's a member of the Football Writers Association of America. After spending his entire life living in B1G country, he moved to the South in 2015.
