Kalen DeBoer has had plenty of critics, both inside and outside the Alabama fanbase. There are a lot of folks who remain skeptical about whether he's the right man for the job in Tuscaloosa. It was always going to be that way. Following Nick Saban, there was just no other way to go but down.
That doesn't defend some of the baffling defeats the Crimson Tide has suffered, but nothing was ever going to be good enough.
At a certain point, however, the criticism begins to ignore all that DeBoer has accomplished as a head coach.
That's certainly the case in ESPN's rankings of the best head coaches in college football for the 2026 season. They landed on DeBoer tied for 10th with Miami's Mario Cristobal, a three-spot drop from last season's rankings that had him 7th. That's despite Alabama making the College Football Playoff and winning a road game over Oklahoma to advance to the Rose Bowl.
Former Alabama QB turned college football analyst Greg McElroy was not going to let that slide, launching an impassioned defense of the Crimson Tide's head coach on the Mac and Cube show on WJOX.
Greg McElroy lays out Kalen DeBoer's case as one of college football's best coaches
One of the biggest arguments people make against DeBoer is that a large part of his success came outside of the Power Four. In fact, a lot of it came at the NAIA level at Sioux Falls. That doesn't matter to McElroy.
"Very few people in college football coaching can tell you that they’ve won national championships, first and foremost,” McElroy said. “You can tell me the level; I could care less. Winning a national championship at the NAIA level, D3, D2, they’re hard to win. It’s not like Sioux Falls had some remarkable advantage over every other team in NAIA. They didn’t. They won it with coaching acumen.
DeBoer went 67-3 during his five seasons at Sioux Falls with three national championships. As McElroy points out, at that level, resources and players are all similar. It all comes down to scheming, and DeBoer schemed circles around his competition at that level.
He's succeeded at every stop. He found instant success at both Fresno State and Washington before choosing to step into the gigantic shoes vacated by Saban in Tuscaloosa.
His overall winning percentage and list of accomplishments exceed many of the coaches ranked ahead of him. And as McElroy later pointed out, he didn't walk into the same situation in his first Power Four opportunity that the likes of Ryan Day, Dan Lanning, and Marcus Freeman did.
"He went 14-1 at Washington, ended one game short, lost to Michigan in the National Championship Game," McElroy said. "In the process, he is undefeated against Dan Lanning, who came in at No. 5. Reminder: when he got to Washington, he didn’t step into a great situation. The year before he arrived, that team went 4-8."
DeBoer led Washington to an 11-2 mark in his first season on the sidelines before leading them to a PAC-12 title and a runner-up finish in 2023.
DeBoer also knows how to get it done in close games. While Alabama fans have been critical that the Crimson Tide tends to play too many close games - we're all a bit spoiled by the Saban-era beatdowns - his record when games are tight is hard to argue against.
“He has done an incredible job in one score contests. …He’s 30-9," McElroy said. "Coaches who consistently win games that come down to the final possession are, in most cases, outcoaching the opposition. He knows how to get to the finish line with more points than the team he’s playing against. Would you like him to win games by 40? Awesome. Cool. I just want him to win games, and he’s done that at a pretty remarkable clip.”
McElroy's argument is compelling. For Alabama fans, they don't much care about the success at Sioux Falls, Fresno State, or Washington, though. The only number that matters is the 20-8 mark he's put up with the Crimson Tide so far. That's a respectable winning percentage of 71%.
But in the 16 years prior to DeBoer's arrival, Alabama won 89.6% of its games under Saban.
That significant difference is the cause of a lot of the angst among Crimson Tide fans. It's also why this job was always going to be nearly impossible, no matter who stepped into it.
That's where McElroy's point becomes especially important. DeBoer isn't competing against ordinary expectations; he's competing against the most successful stretch in Alabama football history.
The Crimson Tide will never return to Saban's level of dominance, but that doesn't mean DeBoer can't build something special in Tuscaloosa in his own right. Judging him against an impossible standard may ignore what he's already accomplished and what he still has a chance to do.
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