The Alabama Football program has seemingly landed their new head coach as Kobe Prentice of ESPN announced that Alabama Football is negotiating a contract to hire Washington Head Coach Kalen DeBoer.
DeBoer is coming off an incredible season at Washington, finishing 14-1 after losing the National Championship to Michigan. DeBoer has done an incredible job in rebuilding Washington back to the heights it reached under Chris Petersen going 25-3 across two seasons.
DeBoer has been a winner at every program he’s led leading Sioux Falls with a 67-3 record winning three NAIA Championships. He’d then lead Fresno State for two seasons before heading to Washington turning a 2-6 team into a 9-3 team two seasons later finishing his career at Fresno State with a 12-6 record.
DeBoer’s successful 2023 season resulted in him winning many of the top coaching awards winning the Walter Camp Coach of the Year, Eddie Robinson Coach of the Year, AP Coach of the Year, Home Depot Coach of the Year, and his second straight Pac-12 Coach of the Year award.
DeBoer will inherit a team loaded with talent that will be one of the National Championship favorites if he’s able to keep key players in place.
On offense, he figures to inherit pieces similar to the ones he had at Washington with Justice Jalen Haynes and Jam Miller in the backfield, Kendrick Law and Kobe Prentice at Wideout, and talented tight ends in Amari Niblack, CJ Dippre, and newcomer Caleb Odom. Should DeBoer turn the offense into something similar to what he did with Washington’s group the Alabama Football team will find itself right back into playoff and National Title contention.
Coach DeBoer will be faced with following up an icon of both the University and the sport as Nick Saban’s successor. His first task at hand will be building a staff and recruiting both recruits and internal players as they weigh their options in the transfer portal. While DeBoer will likely bring in many of his own staffers there are many pieces in place that Nick Saban brought in that should be left in place to keep continuity in the program.
A key piece the Alabama Football program will hope that DeBoer can retain is his Wide Receivers coach JaMarcus Shephard. Shephard became a candidate to replace Holmon Wiggins after he left for Texas A&M quickly becoming one of the nation’s top wide receivers coaches. Shephard has helped develop Rome Odunze who amassed 1,640 yards, Ja’Lynn Polk who recorded 1,159 yards, and Jalen McMillan who would’ve likely recorded his second straight 1,000-yard season if not for injuries.
DeBoer hasn’t had major success recruiting landing the nation’s 29th ranked recruiting class. With all of DeBoer’s recruits coming from the West Coast, we could see him take a leap moving into the Southeast which is a deeper recruiting pool.
The major concern with DeBoer recruiting-wise would be how he performed with In-State recruiting as he didn’t land a top 50 recruit from the State of Washington in this year’s class. DeBoer did much better with his first recruiting class landing two of the top ten recruits in state.
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