A Tale of Two Coaches: Who is passing the vibe check DeBoer or Prime?

Alabama and Colorado found themselves in uncharted waters Sunday morning when their surprise losses suddenly put them on the outside looking in of the College Football Playoff. Not that people weren’t making the case for them to find their way in, regardless of three regular-season losses for each team. But for the first time in a new playoff era, they embody the three-loss playoff argument. 

Flash forward to Monday night, I am sitting on my couch watching Monday Night Football and scrolling through TikTok when two videos pop up: one the Monday press conference from Kalen DeBoer and the other the post-game speech of Colorado head coach Deion Sanders.

What jumped off the screen to me was just how different the tone of their remarks was, despite coming from almost the same on-the-field circumstances. Three-loss teams plagued by inconsistency: While they have big wins on their schedule, their losses are especially ugly considering who they came to, and both still feel like they are in a coaching transition, with DeBoer in his first year after Nick Saban and Sanders trying to rebuild the culture at Colorado from the ground up. 

Both of these teams still have a chance to make the playoff, according to BetMGM, with Alabama’s title odds at +2500, and Colorado at +20000. But before we take Vegas’s opinion and start doing playoff math, we need to remember that in College Football, momentum is everything. The question isn’t, can we make the playoff? The question is, can you win on rivalry week, or has good ole’ Uncle Mo deserted you? It’s time for a vibe check on these two three-loss playoff hopefuls. 

Kicking it off with Colorado. The Buffs right now have the weakest of the three resumes. Per ESPN, the Buffs' RPI is No. 24 in the country, with two of their three losses coming to unranked teams in Nebraska and Kansas, and they will need to win the BIG 12 Championship to make the playoff. 

To make the Big 12 Championship, Colorado is going to need some help. The Buffs right now sit at No.1 in the Big 12, tied with Arizona State, Iowa State, and BYU. The Buffs will need at least one of these teams to lose out on rivalry weekend to get in. Preferably BYU since without the Cougars in the mix, the tiebreakers with Arizona State and Iowa State favor Colorado. With a win and two of the four tied teams losing, the Buffs go straight to the Big 12 Championship.

In his post-game comments following the Buffs’s loss to Kansas, Coach Prime didn’t seem concerned with the future, instead, he put the onus for the loss on his players in a way that challenged them to step up and finish the year. 

“There’s not one of you who can say you played your best game. Nobody in here can say you gave the maximum effort, you gave it all you could, there’s nobody.” Coach Prime said per Bleacher Report. 

“And you see the result, see the problem is you got intoxicated with success, and success is intoxicating, you start believing what they’re saying… and you went out there and we got humbled. Coaches, players, everyone. We went out there and got humbled.” 

Sanders didn’t get the name Prime Time by being humbled and it’s clear that the loss bugs him. Sanders doesn’t stick to the old cliches of “You need to keep hope alive and take care of business yourselves” but instead he calls out his guys for complacency. 

Sander’s initial criticism aside it’s his demand for a response that stands out. 

“But it is what it is, where you go from here… Where do you go from here? What did you learn from this moment, what did you glean from this moment…Cause this moment just ain’t about football it’s about life, and this is a tremendous life lesson. Let’s learn from it, let’s learn from it and grow from it.” 

Sanders isn’t concerned about the playoff, he isn’t concerned with the outside noise. He is concerned with the growth of his players and how they will respond to this loss. Sanders passes the vibe check and keeps the momentum by keeping the emphasis on his guys taking the lesson and moving forward. 

Alabama meanwhile didn’t seem to have the same energy, with DeBoer’s remarks on Monday. Yes, the Crimson Tide does still have an outside shot at a playoff bid. The AP has Alabama sitting at No. 13 right now and with a convincing win over Auburn and the right teams in the top 10 losing Alabama could find their way in.

But the tone of defiance and the energy of Sanders was missing from DeBoer. The clip that rolled across my page in particular. When asked about the difference between a game Alabama lost versus a game the other team won. 

“When you lose you lose, that’s just sickening every time it happens,” DeBoer said in the comments posted to YouTube by AL.com. “to us, we fell short. They didn’t play to the level we’re capable of. And that’s what we look at. That’s what we go back to. That’s what we actually have to flush is the feeling because we have to understand that we’re capable, that we had a lot of consistency for a month, and that wasn’t it on Saturday,” 

DeBoer’s comments about flushing it are the biggest contrast from Deion and ultimately don’t pass the vibe check. Flushing away the inconsistency didn’t keep it from resurfacing against South Carolina, Tennessee, or Oklahoma. Alabama’s answer to struggles seems to be, let’s move past it and get back to the Alabama way. But for Alabama with three losses and only three points in one of those losses just doesn’t feel like Alabama. 

I understand that the remarks in the locker room for DeBoer Saturday were likely different and I know the temptation for Alabama fans to hit the panic button in the first year without Saban. 

I don’t think it's time for all of that, but the vibes just aren’t right in Tuscaloosa right now. Something needs to change and without a tone-setting victory in the Iron Bowl, the playoff hopes are dead. Alabama doesn’t need to flush the Oklahoma loss they need to be humbled by it and learn from it.