Kalen DeBoer didn’t exactly break news but still likely mollified Alabama fans in acknowledging his first year in Tuscaloosa didn’t meet expectations.
If you need a refresher, Alabama went 9-4 in DeBoer’s first season as Nick Saban’s replacement, which included losses to Vanderbilt and a 6-7 Oklahoma Sooners team. It was the worst Alabama season, on paper at least, since Saban’s first year back in 2007.
DeBoer has a naturally sunnier and more optimistic demeanor than his predecessor, but still admitted it failed the program’s standards.
“We fell short of making the Playoffs. It’s as simple as that, right?,” DeBoer said at SEC Media Days. “Giving yourself a chance to go compete for a championship. I think there’s a lot of things that I’m super proud of that have happened within the program that are part of the progression. Yeah, we want it right now, too.
“Yeah, we fell short. Our guys, again, I’m proud of them and the way they’ve responded to us not realizing the goals that we set out to have, getting back to work, focusing on the main thing.”
The main goal, as DeBoer acknowledged, has to be getting the Crimson Tide into the 12-team playoff this season. Alabama will have a new starting quarterback — likely Ty Simpson — and new offensive coordinator (Ryan Grubb), but plenty of reasons to feel bullish about its chances of improving upon last season’s disappointment. A receiver room led by Ryan Williams looks stacked, the Tide didn’t lose a single player in the spring transfer portal and the defense returns eight starters. Those returners include media day participants Deontae Lawson and Tim Keenan III.
A key will be improving on the road, where Alabama struggled mightily in 2024. All four of the Tides’ losses came away from Bryant-Denny Stadium. That doesn’t bode well with challenging road trips to Florida State in Week 1, Georgia in Week 5, South Carolina in Week 9 and the regular season finale at Auburn all on the schedule. Alabama got the edge over Georgia in its 2024 season highlight, a fact that surely hasn’t gone unforgotten in Athens.
The season opener will be especially interesting after Florida State quarterback Thomas Castellanos delivered the trash talking of the offseason.
“They don’t have Nick Saban to save them,” Castellanos said last month. “I just don’t see them stopping me.”
Keenan and Lawson both had thoughts about Castellanos’ trash talk.
“Disrespected will be addressed,” Keenan said.
Said Lawson: “I mean I won’t forget. I won’t forget what he said.”
That’s the kind of mentality this Alabama team needs to embrace this season. For so many of the Saban years, the team had to deal with non-stop “rat poison” as the former Tide coach liked to call it. They were almost always the preseason No. 1 team and a favored title contender. They rarely lost more than one game in a regular season. It could be hard, at times, to come up with extrinsic motivation, to find any real doubters of how good Alabama really was.
After a down year in 2024, that’s not the case anymore. And in acknowledging the disappointment, DeBoer is trying to set the team on the road to redemption.
“Sometimes there’s ups and downs that you have to go through unfortunately that we had to experience,” DeBoer said. “But in the end, we’re going to take advantage of the failures we’ve had and be better because of it.”
Stoic Napier tips his hand
If you know anything about Billy Napier, you know he’s not one for over-the-top praise. He’s a low-key, down-to-earth coach reluctant to provide anything even resembling a juicy quote. He’s the kind of guy you’d love to hang around and talk ball with, but you know once the recorder turns on, he’s going to be extra careful.
It’s why I found it noteworthy that even if he did it in his Napier characteristic way that the Florida coach called this his best team he’s had in Gainesville. Like DeBoer, that’s not exactly breaking news but I liked that Napier was willing to embrace raising the expectations for a Gators team that returns a lot of talent headlined by quarterback DJ Lagway.
“It’s the most talented team we’ve had since we’ve been in Gainesville,” Napier said on SEC Network.
It helps when you have one of the nation’s top returning QBs in Lagway, who showed flashes of greatness last season and should take a big leap in 2025. He has rare, game-breaking ability that could pay huge dividends against what looks like another very challenging schedule for the Gators. Florida took off after Lagway took over as starter last season, and Napier and his staff have done everything they can to try to maximize their time with him.
“We’ve built around the guy, there’s no question,” Napier said. “Players want to play with DJ. We’ve built his class around that and certainly some of these guys that are in the rookie group were a part of that as well.”
The key, of course, will be keeping him healthy. Lagway has been dealing with a lingering shoulder injury that kept him from throwing during spring practice. Napier said Wednesday they feel confident about where the QB stands — he even threw earlier that day before his star turn in Atlanta — and that he’ll be ready to go.
Lagway echoed his coach’s comments while addressing one of the weirder internet rumors about himself.
OU tried to keep Arnold
It wasn’t remotely surprising to see Jackson Arnold, a former five-star recruit, enter the transfer portal after a yo-yo 2024 campaign in Norman. When Brent Venables benched Arnold against Tennessee at halftime, it all but signaled the end was near especially amidst rumored tension behind the scenes.
Arnold left for Auburn, Oklahoma landed a top transfer in Washington State’s John Mateer (as well as his OC Ben Arbuckle) and everyone seemed to get what they wanted.
Which made it all the more surprising then when Venables said Wednesday that the Sooners tried to keep Arnold before he ultimately landed in Auburn.
“I hate what happened — we wanted to keep him and tried to keep him,” Venables said. “But he just needed a fresh start. I don’t want to speak for him. He was wonderful. I was never once disappointed in him.”
Venables’ next quote about Arnold added even more intrigue.
“Everything around him wasn’t helping him be successful,” the OU coach said. “He had no chances in some ways, under the circumstances, and was dealt a really bad hand.”
There’s no question that Oklahoma’s offense was a mess in 2024. Venables fired OC Seth Littrell after only seven games in a season marked by wide receiver injury problems and an inconsistent offensive line.
MSU focusing on trenches improvement
It was a tough first year for Jeff Lebby in Starkville. Inheriting a program that was on its third coach in as many seasons, Lebby lost his starting quarterback, Blake Shapen, to a season-ending injury in Week 4. There was a toughness to Mississippi State that let it hang tough in games against Texas and Georgia for longer than expected, but it all eventually added up to a disappointing 2-10 record.
When you only win two games, there are likely a lot of places you can look to make improvements. For Lebby, it was pretty simple: Mississippi State had to get bigger and better in the trenches to have a shot to compete in the ultra-physical and competitive SEC.
“We had to change the lines of scrimmage with the bodies first,” Lebby said. “Bringing in 10 new (defensive) linemen, eight new (linebackers), having the ability to change those first two levels defensively it had to happen. And then same thing offensively with the offensive line.”
It’s part of a major roster overhaul that includes 34 incoming transfers and a 27-player recruiting class. The Bulldogs brought in a whopping nine offensive linemen in addition to Lebby’s aforementioned 10 defensive linemen. That group includes possible starters at center (Koby Keenum, Brennan Smith) and right tackle (Blake Steen).
Football is a complicated sport but Lebby also understands one of its most simplistic components. You need guys who can protect your quarterback and get after the opposing team’s QB. If you fail in those two areas, it is going to be awfully hard to be successful even if you do have talent at other positions.
Will it be enough to get Mississippi State back on track? Lebby knows the reinforcements must deliver improvements against a schedule that features four College Football Playoff teams from a year ago plus Texas A&M, Ole Miss and Florida.
“That’s what everything has been about since December,” he said. “It’s been about changing the outcome, finding a way to win, creating that inside the locker room every single day. To me, again, we change the outcome because of the way we practice and how we do what we do throughout fall camp and the week.”
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