Kalen DeBoer Says Other Teams Wouldn't Have Made the College Football Playoff With Alabama's Schedule, Which Featured Losses to Vanderbilt and Oklahoma

I refuse to believe the head football coach at the University of Alabama said this in late May following a season in which his team lost games to 6-6 Vanderbilt and Oklahoma. There is simply no way. This program was run by Nick Saban 18 months ago and now the guy at the helm is saying nobody could have possibly expected the Crimson Tide to make the College Football Playoff after having to go through Vandy.

Believing this means you are ill-equipped to be the head football coach at Alabama. Saying it out loud to reporters six months after the season ended means you are incomprehensibly stupid. It's a bad day to be holding Kalen DeBoer stock.

Bama did play a pretty tough schedule in 2024, but so did every other team in the SEC. And the rest of your schedule is irrelevant when the games that kept you out of the Playoff were losses to two 6-6 teams that had three other SEC wins combined. Missouri, Texas and Tennessee played both Vanderbilt and Oklahoma and somehow all managed to win both games. Alabama was not in the CFP because it had multiple losses to bad teams, not because it played some otherworldly schedule.

Man, I remember a time when this program was feared. You spent all week with genuine dread that Saturday was going to roll around and you would be forced to watch your favorite team take on the rolling ball of chainsaws that was the Crimson Tide. And now look at them. It's honestly sad to see. I hope Bama's next coach is able to restore some semblance of pride to that program.