Alabama fans were ready to run Kalen DeBoer out of Tuscaloosa after his Week 1 loss to unranked Florida State, and his four unranked losses across his first 14 games as the Crimson Tide head coach can’t be brushed to the side. But after delivering another win over Georgia and Kirby Smart on Saturday night, this time in Athens, his record against the very best coaches in college football can’t be ignored either.
Now 2-0 against Smart, who is 1-7 against Alabama dating back to the Nick Saban era, DeBoer boasts an absurdly impressive 7-0 record against Smart, Dan Lanning, and Steve Sarkisian. By any measure, those are DeBoer’s peers at the top of the national landscape, and by really the only measure that matters, he’s solidly clear of all three.
Kalen DeBoer is 7-0 combined vs Kirby Smart, Dan Lanning, and Steve Sarkisian.
— College Football Nerds (@CFBNerds) September 28, 2025
But will continue to be inexplicably ranked behind all of them on top coaches rankings.
Alabama still has a coaching edge in the biggest games
DeBoer has plenty of bad losses in his recent history, but he’s continually gotten his team up for big games. In his final season at Washington, when he led the Huskies to the National Championship Game, DeBoer repeatedly bested Lanning’s Ducks, despite entering those games as a significant underdog, and in the CFP semifinal, his Huskies controlled the game against Steve Sarkisian’s Longhorns, before a late comeback made it much tighter.
DeBoer arrives with a bespoke game plan tailored to the defense on the other side, and in his specific matchup with Smart, arguably the game’s preeminent defensive mind, DeBoer’s offenses have jumped out to early leads both times and perplexed the Georgia staff.
In a quirk of the sport and a result of Saban’s dominance, there are just three active national championship-winning head coaches: Smart, Dabo Swinney, and Ryan Day. DeBoer has yet to cross paths with the latter two, but the days of Clemson running the ACC certainly appear to be over. Day’s Buckeyes will be in the mix for the national title once again this year, and if Alabama draws that matchup in the postseason, it’s hard to imagine DeBoer will be overmatched.
The good vibes of this win, which reassert Alabama into the CFP conversation, if the Tide ever left it, could easily be wiped away by an upset loss to Vanderbilt and Diego Pavia next week. We’ve certainly seen that before, but if DeBoer can begin to take care of business in those matchups, he could quickly make a case as the best coach in college football.