Kalen DeBoer conveys confidence in Ryan Williams amid drop issues: ‘He kept plugging away’
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Kalen DeBoer saw first-hand what Ryan Williams could do on a football field last fall, when the wide receiver took the college football world by storm as a 17-year-old freshman.
The Alabama head coach has also saw glimpses of the 2024 Ryan Williams in 2025, with Williams catching 15 passes for 238 yards and 2 touchdowns so far this season. Those stats aren’t bad, considering that the Crimson Tide have had a bye week and have only played 4 games. But there have been some struggles on the field for Williams, not to mention a concussion suffered at the end of that Week 1 loss at Florida State.
Williams also missed a game against Louisiana-Monroe in Week 2 because of that concussion, so he has yet to play 2 weeks in a row, with 1 week in between the FSU and Wisconsin games he played in and then a bye week before the Georgia game last Saturday.
And what about that Georgia game? Well, Williams suffered another of those dropped passes at the start of that showdown, just like he ended the Wisconsin game with a drop. Both drops would’ve probably turned into touchdowns, and the heat has been turned up on Williams because he’s a star wide receiver and plays for Alabama, so the spotlight is always on him.
But Williams’s head coach has his back. During an appearance on Hey Coach, DeBoer came to Williams’s defense regarding those drops early in the 2025 season.
“He kept his head up. He kept plugging away,” Kalen DeBoer said. “He wants that (catch) as much as anyone. I promise you, he didn’t miss it on purpose. His attitude and his energy coming back to practice the last three weeks has been awesome to see.”
Naturally, Alabama fans would like to see a few less drops from Williams as the season goes on, but DeBoer’s confidence in his star playmaker isn’t going anywhere as the 10th-ranked Crimson Tide get ready to host No. 16 Vanderbilt on Saturday (3:30 p.m. ET, ABC).
Cory Nightingale, a former sportswriter and sports editor at the Miami Herald and Palm Beach Post, is a South Florida-based freelance writer who covers Alabama for SaturdayDownSouth.com.
