Kalen DeBoer the right coach for the future, but not the right now for Alabama

Alabama football head coach Kalen DeBoer has been given the unenviable task of trying to fit a round peg in a square hole. The results, unsurprisigly, have led to the worst seven game start to a season for the Crimson Tide since 2007.

Following the loss to Tennessee in Knoxville, Alabama fell to 5-2, looking nothing like the team that started the game against Georiga three weeks ago 28-0 and pulled off a signature win in DeBoer's first season over the team that many thought had supplanted Alabama as the standard of college football.

Whether Georgia is the standard or not, one thing is clear after the Third Saturday in October: Alabama is no longer the standard. The Vols fans still stormed the field after beating them, but I wouldn't expect the same thing in Baton Rouge if LSU beats the Crimson Tide three weeks from now.

Because beating Alabama isn't a big deal right now. Vanderbilt did it. A Tennessee team with plenty of warts did it. That probably wasn't the last loss we'll see in DeBoer's debut season at the Capstone, and while the Tide isn't eliminated from the playoff race, their hopes are on life support and the doctor is getting ready to pull the plug.

Whether DeBoer is the right man for the job remains to be seen; he can't be fully judged off of seven games with a team he had no part in building save for a handful of transfers. I still believe DeBoer was the right hire for the future of the program and will ultimately find success. But the sample size is big enough to show me he wasn't the right guy for just this one single season. But you don't make a hire for a single season; you make a hire for the future.

DeBoer is an offensive minded coach, but the players Alabama has on offense don't fit his style. As much as I love and have defended Jalen Milroe, he's not a DeBoer quarterback. He's not the level of passer at this stage of his career for the offense to function the way DeBoer and offensive coordinator Nick Sheridan want it to.

Benching Milroe isn't a realistic option. Maybe Ty Simpson would be a better fit for what DeBoer wants to do, maybe not. It's not a coincidence that two coaching staffs agreed that Milroe was the guy. But that could have as much to do with not losing the locker room than on field performance. The locker room was in near revolt last season in Tampa when Tyler Buchner started in place of Milroe against USF.

I think Milroe is the better player and gives Alabama the best chance to win. But he's not a Kalen DeBoer quarterback. I have no idea if Ty Simpson is. I know DeBoer and the staff really like Austin Mack, who they recruited to Washington and brought with them to Alabama. He's obviously not ready right now. They are also high on incoming freshman Keelan Russell, the one time SMU commit who flipped to Alabama and has seen a meteoric rise up the recruiting rankings with an eye-popping senior season at the highest level of Texas high school football.

What Alabama will look like under DeBoer when he has his team in here will tell the tale. We won't see that next year, but 2026 will be the money year for him and for Byrne to see if this will work or not.

And I'm not making excuses for DeBoer; he deserves to take accountability for an undisciplined football team that can't get out of its own way. But the reality is this isn't a new thing; Alabama has been one of the most penalized teams in the country the last few seasons. That lack of discipline was evident in the last few Saban teams, too, even if people don't want to remember it now.

There was no real succession plan for a post-Saban Alabama. No coordinators who had been with him for long periods of time who could take the torch and keep the roster completely together, maybe preventing guys like Caleb Downs from transferring. But in Saban's final season he had two first-year coordinators running the show. His most successful guys, Kirby Smart and Steve Sarkisian, are coaching top tier programs of their own and had no interest in taking a lateral move to Tuscaloosa.

Maybe Jeremy Pruitt could have been that guy if he didn't take an ill-fated Tennessee job following the 2017 season. Though Pruitt seemed in over his head as the head coach in Knoxville, but maybe seven more years of learning would've been the difference.

None of that matters, now. We are where we are. DeBoer is the head coach. And he's proven to be a good one, albeit a bit more inexperienced than anyone wanted to admit when he was hired. This is just his third season of coaching power-four level football after spending time at Fresno State and then at lower divisions prior to getting the Washington job.

He's still learning on the job and trying to fit his style around a roster that was recruited for something else. He's learning just how hard it is to win in this league, and he won't rest on his laurels and be content with what he's seen in year one.

His biggest task moving forward will be to keep a roster engaged when none of them have experienced losing at this level. No Alabama team in the last 17 years had lost a second game before the calendar flipped to November. How will the team respond to that? Can he keep them engaged and fighting? Or will we see more players begin to opt out and quit on the team like Jeheim Oatis did following the Vanderbilt loss?

In this era of college football, nothing is ever really certain. But it's clear that this transition won't be as smooth as most of us hoped.