Kalen DeBoer was always going to be walking on hot coals as the head coach of the Alabama Crimson Tide.
In a way, he took the most impossible head-coaching job in the history of college football.
Replacing Nick Saban and his six national championships won in Tuscaloosa is no easy task. Those are big shoes to fill. Heck, even if DeBoer wins another championship for the Tide, he’ll need to get right back on track toward winning another to avoid “hot seat” talk.
That was always going to be his life in Tuscaloosa, though, and he knew that when he left the Washington Huskies and took the job with the Tide. Frankly, he deserves respect for walking into that pressure-cooker with clear eyes.
And yet, that won’t stop folks from criticizing the Tide in the post-Saban era. DeBoer missed the College Football Playoff in year one, and although the Tide did make the CFP in year two and even advanced to the quarterfinal game at the Rose Bowl, the lasting impression of the 2025 season wasn’t a great one.
The Tide suffered four losses last season. One came to what turned out to be a bad Florida State team. One came to Oklahoma. The other two were blowout losses. One to Georgia in the SEC Championship Game and the other to Indiana in the Rose Bowl.
Alabama lost those four games by a combined score of 120-48.
Looking ahead to the 2026 season, those losses have colored the analysis of this program for SEC Network analyst Benjamin Watson.
“I look back to the SEC championship game, they ran the ball for -3 yards. When have we ever heard of an Alabama team run the ball for -3 yards? So for them to go where they want to go in that offense, they’ve got to develop a certain toughness — and this isn’t an insult. This is just my observation in analyzing the sport. They’ve got to regain a toughness that Alabama used to have, that we didn’t see from them last year,” Watson said Tuesday on “The Paul Finebaum Show,” according to On3.
Analyst says Alabama Crimson Tide have been lacking toughness
The Tide, coached by Saban, were always known to run the football down their opponents’ throats. To Watson’s point, that was part of what made Alabama intimidating at the height of the Saban dynasty.
Sure, it helped that he was trotting out players like Derrick Henry and Mark Ingram, among others, but it was also a mindset.
Watson hasn’t seen that mindset out of Alabama over the past two years, and he believes that is what must change in order for the Tide to be true contenders under DeBoer.
“Even thinking about that game against Indiana, you look at the bookends of their season — the beginning against Florida State and the very end against Indiana — they were pushed around. Now, they had an eight-game win streak in there. They played some good football throughout the season. Deserved to be in the Playoff. But that’s what we need to see from Alabama, which is what has been lacking over the last couple years,” he explained.
In the CFP game against Indiana, the Tide rushed for a total of 23 yards on 17 carries. That was an abysmal 1.4-yards-per-carry average.
