Kalen DeBoer will need to do more than live on the edge to keep Alabama happy
After last week’s college football catastrophe at Vanderbilt, Alabama almost suffered yet another baffling loss against a visiting South Carolina on Saturday.
Late-game heroics from Crimson Tide cornerback Domani Jackson picking off an errant pass from Gamecocks quarterback LaNorris Sellers prevented the South Carolina upset, but the game got awful close to becoming another Alabama disaster there for a second,
The Crimson Tide let up a late touchdown to the Gamecocks and missed snagging an onside kick attempt to set the visitors up for a shocker at Bryant-Denny Stadium.
In fact, Alabama trailed going into the fourth quarter, and two touchdowns wasn’t even enough to put South Carolina away for good.
While it’s the SEC on any given Saturday, it’s more than fair to question why Alabama was in this position in the first place, particularly after such a demoralizing loss in Nashville last week and so much talent on the roster.
Alabama fans won’t endear much sympathy from the grander college football world after years of sustained success, but the whiplash from the Nick Saban era to the Kalen DeBoer era has to be jarring.
These fans are going from beating the top nation in the Georgia two weeks ago to losing to Vanderbilt on the road last week and celebrating an escape from South Carolina at home this week. You don’t empathize as much as you wince because this is still a fierce culture shock for the Alabama faithful.
With a trip to Tennessee next week on the books and games against Missouri, LSU and Oklahoma in the weeks to come, Alabama’s chances of being on the ropes late in the season has skyrocketed past our expectations of where this team would be two weeks ago.
Sure, at its peak, Alabama can beat the best team in the country. At its worst, however, it can lose to Vandy and almost lose to South Carolina.
With only one loss this season, the Crimson Tide still have a clear path to the College Football Playoffs. However, that path feels much more fraught than it did after the Georgia win. For the first time in a long time, Alabama feels hard to trust, even against teams they’re supposed to beat.
It’s only the first year of the DeBoer era, so this staff deserves some grace. Saban went 7-6 in his first year with Alabama and lost four-consecutive games that season.
The hard part for DeBoer is simply that was then, and this is now. Life post-Saban was always going to be dicey for Alabama, and DeBoer was never going to get as long as Saban did to succeed.
For a program so accustomed to not only winning, but absolutely dominating, it’s now a fair question to wonder how long DeBoer’s coaching staff will get to return Alabama to where its fans (and administration members) are comfortable.
Living on the edge works for most college fanbases. But this is Tuscaloosa.