Wtf is up with Bama?

After riding the DeBoer coaster for 2 years, I am just baffled at how we can be so good yet so bad

Everybody says Kalen DeBoer is a great coach. I would have agreed with that if I didn’t watch his crappy team for two crappy years. 20-8 is his record. How long does it take to get to 8 losses for Saban? 2023 had two losses (Texas and Michigan). 2022 had two losses (Tennessee and LSU). 2021 had two losses (Texas A&M and Georgia). 2020 had no losses. 2019 had two losses (LSU and Auburn). Saban was 60-8 in that 5 year stretch. We have had the same amount of losses in the last two years as the previous 5 years combined under Saban. Let’s take out postseason games. DeBoer is 19-6. Saban was 55-6. DeBoer has only won 76% of his regular season games, compared to 90% for Saban.

Listen, Nick Saban is the best coach of all time. Of course DeBoer wasn’t going to be just as good. However, Alabama is still a premier program and has top 5 talent, so why haven’t they been a top 5 team? DeBoer is supposed to be an amazing coach, why is Alabama so mediocre?

Ole Miss has been a better team than Alabama for two years in a row now. That is not acceptable. Alabama is hardly a top 5 team in their own conference as Georgia, Ole Miss, and Texas have hit their stride.

While the main problem in 2024 was Jalen Milroe’s inconsistencies, overall, the traditional run game has been the thorn in our side for each of the last two years. The only reason Bama’s run game looked good on paper last year was because of some crazy plays from Milroe. This year’s Alabama run game was the most inchoherent piece of dog crap I have ever seen in my life. Seeing Alabama try to run is like seeing a baby horse try to walk for the first time. It’s pathetic. The only thing worse is Oklahoma’s run game, so at least we aren’t alone. The O-line has no grit. They have no technique. They have no drive. They are not good. The RBs haven’t exactly been helping either. Daniel Hill and Jam Miller would be lucky to even be a walk on a 2010s Alabama team.

The passing game is the worst it has been since Jalen Hurts was the full-time starter. Milroe was good for some deep balls. He had a few games where he seemed like the best player in the country, but he also had games where he looked like Jelly Roll trying to jump through a hula hoop, in other words, he looked like a damn fool. A deer in headlights. Ty Simpson has been much more consistent than Milroe, and that is why we made the playoffs. He is really good, and he definitely has a future as an NFL QB, but I feel like the scheme has failed him. Give him more quick passes. More RPOs. Alabama’s offense was at its best when Tua and Mac could just dump the ball to our great WRs and let them do the work. There were almost no oppurtunities for quick YAC this year. Bernard, Williams, Brooks, and Horton are all really good WRs, but Grubb couldn’t scheme them open. Why was it so hard for Grubb to get these guys open? We can’t run the ball.

So, that’s a lot of negative, all of which being on the offensive side of the ball, which just so happens to be DeBoer’s area of expertise. There is some positives though. The defense has been really good for the most part. There are only four games I can think of where the defense wasn’t good (Vandy and Oklahoma last year. Florida State and Indiana this year). Most of the time, the defense has been really good. Not vintage Saban good, but good enough to win a championship. The pass rush, which has been the weakest part of the defense under Womack, looked really good in the playoffs this year.

Another positive is the big games that he has won. We have beaten Georgia in the regular season two years in a row. We kicked LSU’s butt last year. We are 5-1 against rivals. We broke Auburn’s heart again. We came back from 17-0 to win a playoff game on the road. There has been good. There has been some really good. However, there has been way too much mediocre. The greatest enemy of success is complacency, and it seems like Alabama has grown complacent, especially the offense. The defense always seem to get better and better while the offense gets worse and worse.

So where does Alabama go from here? The talent is there, except for maybe at RB, but it is hard to properly evaluate them when the line has been so bad at run blocking. Alabama’s schedule next year starts with 5 games that should be easy. Though I worry about the road trip to Mississippi State. After that, Bama must play vs Georgia, at Tennessee, vs A&M, at LSU, at Vandy, and vs Auburn with a bye and a game against Chattanooga thrown in. That is a gauntlet, and Bama will have 2-4 losses yet again if they can’t develop a run game and a consistent pass game.

I’m not on the fire DeBoer train yet, but if Alabama can’t establish some consistency next year, it might be time to start looking elsewhere.

On a somewhat related note, what is going on with Alabama basketball? The defense and rebounding just isn’t up to the normal standard. It’s pretty hard to watch when Alabama keeps getting bullied down low over and over again by literally everyone. Luckily the SEC isn’t very strong this year, so Alabama still has a really good chance to win the conference, but a Final 4 run is extremely unlikely unless Bama can find some sort of prescence in the paint.