Kalen DeBoer walks with a quiet confidence. It's not arrogance, but a total and complete confidence in who he is and his ability as a football coach and program builder. It's a confidence he's instilled into his players, his form of motivation differing from the legendary coach before him.
It's that confidence that led DeBoer to leave a comfortable position at Washington with little pressure, to the most high pressure job in the sport, following in the footsteps of the greatest coach in its history.
It would take a guy with confidence to be willing to step into those shoes. And with that confidence, DeBoer walks into the biggest, most important game of his life. And yes, I'm well aware that he coached in the national championship game last season. That's child's play in comparsion to what's on the line in a given Saturday in Tuscaloosa.
Alabama fans don't just want to win, they expect to. Winning doesn't feel good as much as it does relieving. The agony of defeat too much to take. Lose a game as coach, lose faith. Lose two games, the base starts to turn. A third? Unthinkable. Alabama hasn't lost more than two games in a single season since 2010.
Eventually, Kalen DeBoer will lose a game as the Alabama head coach. It will probably happen this season. It just can't happen Saturday night.
In this new era of college football with an expanded playoff, this is not a must-win game for either team's playoff hopes. Either could lose and still be in the projected playoff field come Sunday morning. The game doesn't mean what it used to in the national championship race, but for perception, this game means everything to DeBoer and Alabama.
The talk since that fateful day in January where Nick Saban announced his retirement has been that Alabama's reign at the top of the sport is over. No matter how good of a coach DeBoer is, there's no way he will come close to the level of success as his predecessor.
It was the driving narrative for some of the transfer portal losses the Tide suffered, and is the No. 1 thing opposing coaches are using to negative recruit against them. That narrative will gain even more life if Alabama falls flat in DeBoer's first opportunity to garner a signature win, especially coming against Georgia.
Kirby Smart built Georgia in the image of Saban's Alabama, and despite his difficulties in besting Saban and Alabama, Smart has won two national titles since the last time the Crimson Tide won one. He's the top dog in the sport now that Saban works for ESPN.
Alabama bested Georgia the last time the two teams met in Atlanta last December, but that game may as well have been a decade ago based on the national narrative of the SEC running through Athens rather than Tuscaloosa.
This game is more important for the narrative than the playoff race. It's a massive recruiting weekend for the Crimson Tide. You can bet all the recruits watching from the Bryant-Denny seats are curious to see whether Alabama is still Alabama. A loss fuels the narrative that they are not, and begins the far-too-early questions about whether DeBoer is the right guy for this job.
A win proves it's just business as usual. Meet the new boss. He's not the same as the old boss, but Alabama can win at a similar level.