Kalen DeBoer sends awesome message to former Alabama football stars

Replacing Nick Saban was always going to be an impossible task, and though it hasn’t always been smooth sailing, Kalen DeBoer has always had the right perspective on the job and his precarious place in Alabama football history. Deboer continued to prove that this week, as former Alabama players embrace his stewardship of the program, and make the pilgrimage back to Tuscaloosa. 

Last week for Alabama’s 20-9 win over LSU at Bryant-Denny Stadium, Saban entertained a number of those former Crimson Tide stars, including Dallas Cowboys rookie Tyler Booker, who spent his final season under DeBoer. The second-year head coach was asked about those players returning to visit the program, and he couldn’t have given a better response. 

Kalen DeBoer has the perfect mentality to lead the Crimson Tide

DeBoer took a beating from fans early in the season after losing to Florida State in Week 1, his fourth loss to an unranked opponent since taking over the Crimson Tide. That matched the total of Saban’s unranked losses across 14 years. Yet, he remained unflappable, and the Tide rattled off eight straight victories. 

With the pressure mounting after last season’s four-loss campaign, plenty of head coaches would have crumbled. Instead, DeBoer embraced the black hoodie, played into the fanbase's superstitions, and stayed the course. Now Alabama looks to be on the verge of a return to the SEC Championship Game and the College Football Playoff. 

It’s not just his ability to handle adversity, though. For a coach who never ventured into SEC country before, DeBoer’s awareness of how important the Alabama football program is to the fanbase and how meaningful its history is to the sport as a whole has been refreshing. All coaches have egos; it’s impossible to get to where they are without one, but DeBoer's ego hardly ever shows through. 

Plenty of coaches who replaced a legend like Saban would want to wipe the slate clean, to claim control of an empire built by their predecessor, or they would lean too far into the previous head coach's identity and let the magnitude of the icon swallow them whole. DeBoer has seemingly struck the perfect balance. 

The Alabama football program is uniquely his own, but Saban’s former stars are excited to come back and experience it. That’s a massive advantage for recruiting, and DeBoer knows how to leverage the star power of the program he inherited and give those players their due. 

It can all come crumbling down with an Iron Bowl loss or an early College Football Playoff exit, but DeBoer seems to be heading in the right direction, and he’s going to keep winning over the Alabama fanbase.