O'Gara: Now that the dust has settled (a bit), let's set a simple, but realistic Year 1 expectation for Kalen DeBoer
On The Saturday Down South Podcast, we have a saying. It’s more of a mantra at this point because in this knee-jerk reaction world, it’s something I find myself defaulting to more times than those with a rooting interest.
We don’t judge Year 1 coaches.
I know. You think that’s silly. You think that holding coaches accountable at all times is fair because of the money that they make and the lives they impact. I get it.
I also get that Year 1 coaches all inherit different situations, and applying the same logic to all of them makes little to no sense.
Saying your coach is destined to fail because of a non-New Year’s 6 bowl berth doesn’t make sense when we know that Urban Meyer, Nick Saban and Kirby Smart all endured that in Year 1 before winning multiple titles at their respective SEC jobs. We also know that saying your coach is destined for success because of a national championship appearance doesn’t make sense when we know that Gus Malzahn did that before enduring nothing but 4-loss seasons in his last 7 seasons at Auburn. Year 1 isn’t the barometer that some make it out to be.
That’ll be difficult for the masses to remember with Kalen DeBoer, who enters a 1-of-1 situation. He replaced Nick Saban, AKA the greatest coach of all-time, on the heels of 6 national titles and 13 consecutive 11-win seasons. The only way DeBoer finishes his Alabama tenure as an “upgrade” is if he supplants his predecessor as the greatest coach of all-time.
That’s not a realistic expectation, especially not in Year 1. What is? You’ve come to the right place.
DeBoer is not entering a “title or bust” year a la Ryan Day at Ohio State. Yeah, it’s Alabama. No, it’s not some indictment of DeBoer’s ability to coach if he can’t get the Tide to a title game in the first year of the 12-team Playoff. Saban left the program in a great place, but let’s not ignore the fact that we’re now living in a time in which the NIL/transfer portal world exists. It exists with this current 30-day window that allows players to transfer without sitting a year after having their coach replaced, and it exists with the post-spring window.
The expectation for Year 1 of the DeBoer era should be to make the 12-team Playoff. And if he doesn’t reach that, it’s by no means the end of the world. Save that discussion for after Year 2.
Is that too ambitious? I don’t think so. That’s basically saying a 10-2 regular season is realistic in Year 1. I believe it is.
An offensive-minded national runner-up coach returns a quarterback that finished No. 6 in the Heisman Trophy voting. Oh, and that coach is 12-2 vs. AP Top 25 competition in 4 seasons at Fresno State and Washington. That might not win you a national title, but you’re out of your mind if you think that makes Alabama have a 7-5 floor.
There are questions about how the pass-heavy DeBoer/Ryan Grubb offense will translate with Jalen Milroe, and it wouldn’t be surprising to see the Tide add pass-catchers in the post-spring portal window (Grubb hasn’t been officially announced as the Tide’s new OC but that’s based on multiple reports that he’s expected to take on that role). The offense, even if it goes through a bit of an identity crisis, should put up points, especially now that it has a center that can snap the football.
The questions lie on defense. As we know, it’s not just that the best defensive-minded head coach in the history of the sport is no longer running the show. Kane Wommack is. The fact that he led top-30 units in 3 of the past 4 years bodes well — the one year he didn’t was Year 1 at South Alabama — but it doesn’t guarantee anything. We also know that Alabama’s top returning defensive player, Caleb Downs, bounced for Ohio State. Outside of Malachi Moore, the majority of that elite secondary is gone, as are top edge guys Dallas Turner and Chris Braswell.
If we’re being honest, we won’t know what to expect from the Alabama defense until it faces Georgia in late September. Set the expectation somewhere between mediocre — by normal program standards — and solid. By “solid” I mean a top-30 unit.
Yes, I picked that number for a reason. Alabama hasn’t had a defense finish outside of the top 30 in scoring since the last year of the pre-Saban era in 2006 when it finished … No. 31. This group will be worse. That’s inevitable. Having 17 consecutive top-30 defenses is a dream. Just because that dream is likely coming to an end doesn’t mean that the season will turn into a nightmare.
A nightmare would be facing a schedule like Florida’s, which ends with 5 consecutive foes that finished in the top 15 of the AP Poll. Alabama’s schedule is tricky but manageable. It only features 2 foes that played in New Year’s 6 bowl games, and both of those games are in Tuscaloosa.
That’s the good news. The bad news is that this Year 1 will be magnified in a different way than any before it. That prolonged level of dominance was always going to produce that, no matter who Saban’s successor was. Any sort of “this hasn’t happened since Year 1 of the Saban era” stat will be overanalyzed 6 ways to Sunday. It’ll probably ignore the context of that 30-day transfer window, as well as things like Alabama was dominant, but not perfect.
For example, we might forget that in 2021 and 2022, Alabama was in the bottom 20 in penalty yards/game. We also could ignore that in 2023, Saban suffered his most lopsided home loss since arriving in Tuscaloosa, and that Alabama had more halftime deficits (5) than any of his previous 16 squads. You can bet anything that there’ll be complaints about not having one of the elite defenses even though Alabama hasn’t ranked in the top 8 in scoring defense since 2017.
Ideally, all of those things would be remembered in any discussion about DeBoer’s Year 1 expectations. Or ideally, something else would be remembered.
Don’t judge Year 1 coaches.