The fire, energy, and passion was evident from the Alabama football team this week as they routed an overmatched UL Monroe 73-0. That energy on the field was also evident on the sideline. Tide fans have long wanted to see the fire from Kalen DeBoer. They wanted to see that he cared. They wanted to see his energy spill out on the field.
They got their wish this week.
DeBoer was emotional on the sideline throughout the game, even into the fourth quarter of a game that was decided after just a couple of possessions. Teams tend to take on the identity of their coach. Last week, a timid, unemotional DeBoer led a timid, unemotional football team.
The exact opposite was true this week. Now, the trick will be to sustain that moving forward as the schedule gets increasingly more difficult, starting this week with Wisconsin coming to Tuscaloosa.
Nick Saban always said that you never want to waste a failure. DeBoer echoed that in the postgame following Saturday's dismantling of the Warhawks, and the team seems to have gotten the message.
"It's all we could control, was what was in front of us," DeBoer said after the game. "It sucks to learn lessons or whatever you want to call it. It is what it is, but these guys did it. Now, they gotta do it again. They gotta have the discipline to do it over and over again. The resiliency is probably the thing I'll take from them because their response was not timid in any way. It was with power. It was with aggression and with pride. That took a hit last week. All that was something that really came into play as far as what you saw tonight and how they responded."
Kalen DeBoer sounds like a different guy with his back against the wall
Even taking into account some of the heat DeBoer felt following last season's disappointing 9-4 debut, it was nothing like he received following the Crimson Tide's season-opening loss to Florida State. The Seminoles look like a quality football team, and it's likely to look a bit ridiculous in hindsight that losing to them brought such vitriol to the coach and the program.
But DeBoer, with his back against the wall, seems like a completely different coach. A new side of him has emerged from the fire. He has a different energy, a different disposition about him.
Take the quote above as a perfect example. DeBoer is the king of coach-speak. Ask anyone who covers the team, and they'll tell you he has a remarkable ability to say a whole lot without saying a single thing.
His postgame comments this week were different. They were pointed and direct. It was obvious in the aftermath of the Florida State loss that he was frustrated with his team's performance. It was clear from how they responded that he got the message across this week, and an ultra-prepared football team took the field against UL Monroe.
And that's got to be the expectation moving forward from him to the team. That's going to be the expectation for him from Alabama fans.
Beating UL Monroe means next to nothing in the grand scheme of things. No Alabama coach has ever been judged on his ability to blow out inferior opponents. DeBoer's future in Tuscaloosa will be decided during a brutal SEC schedule.
But Saturday night was a good start; a nice way to flip the page and move forward following the disappointment in Tallahassee. Now it's all about sustaining that energy and that effort moving forward against tougher opponents.
If Alabama can replicate the effort they gave this past weekend consistently, they're going to win a lot of games and end up in the College Football Playoff.