Everything Kalen DeBoer Said As Alabama Moves on to Homecoming Week

The Alabama head coach meets with the media on Monday after losing to Tennessee.

Alabama football coach Kalen DeBoer during the NCAA college football game against Tennessee on Saturday, Oct. 19, 2024, in Knoxville. Tenn. / Saul Young/News Sentinel / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. -- Alabama head coach Kalen DeBoer meets with the media as the program looks to regroup and bounce back this week. The Crimson Tide is coming off its second loss of the season, this time to their rival, the Tennessee Volunteers. DeBoer discusses details from the loss and how his team can move forward as the Missouri Tigers are coming to Tuscaloosa this weekend.

Opening Statement

“Alright, good morning. We’ve had two losses now and just trying to find those complete games as a team and there’s been times throughout the season where we’ve played very complimentary. It might be takeaways and scoring. It might be one team needs a little pick me up, the other comes through. When the losses happen, those things get amplified. We’ll certainly look into that more. We’ve got to play better as a team. That’s what great teams do. We hadn’t been at our best in those two games in particular. I know there’s other times we can always look and know we’ve got to improve, but you can’t have the mistakes, you can’t have the penalties, got to have better execution. All those things that put you behind the eight-ball throughout the course of the game here in the SEC there’s such a fine line between winning and losing and that’s how you get beat. That’s on all of us. It starts with me just continuing to set the standard that will lead to high performance. I know that it just comes down to competing. Competing, being solution-oriented, every day, bringing everything you have to the football team.

"I’m confident in a group of guys that want to be great. There’s no doubt about it, I can see it in their response each and every day, just showing up to work. I have no doubt that that’s going to continue to happen. We know that being a championship football team is hard. We all signed up for it. We all want to continue to improve our awareness, our intensity, and that’s not just intensity on the football field and all that. That’s just everything we do. It takes everything we’ve got and that’s what we signed up for. I think the biggest thing is the message has been over the weeks, not just this week, not just after Vanderbilt, but the weeks all season long, the message is going to be there’s never going to be excuses. That’s the one thing that only softens character. It only lowers the standard and that will never happen. So, we talk about being solution oriented, we talk about moving forward, making sure we’ve got the right people here and I firmly believe that we’ve got a lot of great people with a lot of great skillsets, whether it’s players, staff, and that they’re all working together. So, really know that that’s going to be the case.

"Kind of moving on to a couple of other things, just with injuries. I’ll give you an update. With Keon, Keon Sabb he does have a lower extremity injury. We’re still gathering information here, but we do expect him to be down for a while. That could be an extended amount of time and we’ll just continue to evaluate that. There’s a lot of, I think one position group in particular, just kind of put them all together. The all the other DBs, I think, we’ll just look to see how they progress throughout the week. A lot of similarities between just the level of injuries that they all have. Right now, I’d be expecting them all to be able to play on Saturday. So, we’ll be ready to go.

"When it comes to Missouri, just Coach Drinkwitz, especially over the last two year, but I know it takes time for him to build to this. He’s done a great job. Great football coach, as far as how he’s developing guys, bringing the right people into his program. Got some transfers that have added to a solid group of returning starters. 17-3 over the last two years, just a resilient group, won some close games and so we’ve got another great task at hand as they’re all going to always be in the SEC. Our guys are looking forward to the challenge. I know this week’s going to be, whenever we get back to work and want to bring a Homecoming win back home for all our fans, all our alumnae.”

Is Jalen Milroe dealing with an injury? How to rebuild his confidence?

“I think at this point during the year, I don’t think there’s many guys that play a lot of snaps that don’t have something and just working through it, but he’s more than capable and as he goes through the week you know you’re just ready to play on Saturday. There’s nothing that’s going to be holding him back from going out there and helping us get a win. I’m confident of that.

What are you exclusively responsible for?

“Yeah, I think all those things you mentioned are part of the job responsibility and how I look at it. Take all those things seriously. Every element of the program it’s always things that I’m going to discuss if it involves other people which usually it does and go to those people while making sure our coaching staff is aligned, on the same page. Whether it is the playcalling, whether it is the situational piece off the field. Recruiting efforts, making sure that everything’s aligned. Evaluating. I’ll tell you this, a lot of times there’s situations that do come up that really work out for you. You think about many times where in the past with different teams and all that, maybe its not the decision that you would have made as far as that particular call, but there’s a lot of good calls that you can make that all work. And so what happens is you’ve got to make sure that the guys are prepared and they’re confident, then going out and execute what you’ve been working on. So, I have full confidence in who we have and my job’s to continue to guide them, give them my perspective, be there in the moment in the games to continue to make sure we’re sticking to the plan that we worked on, the plan that was created, the ones that the guys have practiced. Just making sure we’re staying the course in that moment and just also staying the course as we develop our players over the course of the year, years and their careers.” 

On Kendrick Law's penalty...

"The message continues to be, with the team, it's not just one, we've got to learn from those moments. Those moments are big. Our choices, our decisions, our words, our actions, all of those things, they have to be focused on what's best for our team. Obviously in that moment, we're fighting to try to find a way to win. It's a big moment. We've got to make sure we, of course address them, but we can't continue to have mistakes, those in particular that we can control. Some things you can't control, things that happen to you, the way the ball bounces, and all of those things. I think everything in general, just our thoughts, we have to make sure other people's thoughts don't become ours. We've got to make sure if someone's talking to us, we've got to learn to walk the other way, and be more emotionally disciplined in every facet. Not just the high aggression type things, but when the momentum swings, and things like that happen in a game, be able to trust your preparation, trust what you're doing. But we've got to be better there, obviously that's an important part of what great teams do, is be great in those times.

On Bray Hubbard...

"Bray's been working hard for this opportunity. He worked, not just last week, but every week to be ready, and we had no doubt he would be come Saturday when he was called upon. He'll go out there again this week. Our team really believes in him, he does a lot of things on special teams, you can see it every day in practice. He's been around the program, and now's his time, it's next man up mentality that we talk about. And that's what it's got to be. I know the high-level want-to that he has. I'm excited for his opportunity. I love Keon to death and Keon's a warrior, man. There's more things I want to say about Keon and what he did to try to go out there and help our football team, but there's next man up mentality and I'm excited for the opportunity that Bray has in front of him.

On capitalizing on takeaways...

"It's different I think each week, we talk about matchups and how they present themselves. A lot of the things were just drives stalling because we were, I don't want to say it's always shooting yourself in the foot, but we weren't executing. Or something would happen, and a lot of times it was, right, false starts, or whatever it might be. We just wasted plays, and got ourselves behind the chains, not able to have our full offense available on every play. We were good at that early in the season. We've got to get back to taking advantage of those opportunities playing off the defense, and those momentum swings, keeping them on our side when those times come. Credit the defense, a couple times in a row they've gotten the ball loose or have made some interceptions. Again, we've got to play team football and make those opportunities pay off."

On secondary injuries...

"Yeah, that'd be Zabien, DeVonta. Red, he'd be in that group as well."

Is there still a learning curve for Jalen Milroe in this offense?

“I’m pleased with a lot of the things he’s done, the way he’s really wanted to learn the offense, our system. I think there’s always a management of a game that goes between coaching staff and your quarterback because he’s the ultimate guy on the field that runs the show. I think, when you asked if there’s a learning curve, I think there always is. I think it continues. But, obviously, we’re halfway through the season. We got to make sure we continue to do things he’s comfortable with, which I think he’s comfortable with, you know, everything we ask him. There’s also then situations you get into that are in front of you, You know, how many times you like to be in second-and-longs, third-and-longs. Those are hard on any quarterback no matter how good you are. So there’s, I know in Jalen’s case, I know how he takes it all on himself. But there’s other things that we can all do to help support him and put him, keep him from being in those tough spots, especially when you have a loud environment and it’s hard enough just to be able to communicate with your team, make those extra little checks or calls that need to be made. That energy is a lot. We need to come through and help him a little bit more too. And just like you’d guess, he can continue to improve as well. 

Any consideration for using Conor Talty on long field goals? 

I have a lot of confidence in Conor. I’ve seen Conor in practice continue to really be more consistent than I remember in the spring. And, you know, I think we were right on the edge of what Graham was capable of. I felt that. Did think about jut which way the kick, even though there was just a small wind, looking for that little… I knew it would be close. You know, you go with your gut on those things and obviously, it came up just short. But felt like he was on point, and felt like he put a good, solid swing on it. And, youknow, we got a lot of confidence in both of those guys, to be honest with you.

Stay focused on Missouri 

I still feel like, (with what)  my experiences have been, there’s too much football yet. And maybe the last week you try and give some perspective. There’s so many things that can change between now and then. So that’s really, as Kane had said, that’s really where our focus is at is just on this game, 1-0. I already heard in the locker room from our players. They understand the big picture is one thing. In order to make the big picture relevant, we have to take care of what’s in front of us. We have to continue to build, do what the championship teams do, build on championship-caliber teams do, build on your belief, build on your intensity and everything that you do. And then just have some grit. If you look across the championships that have been won in this program, obviously I wasn’t a part of them, but there’s probably a lot of common things that I just mentioned that are you know right there. I firmly believe this team is capable of that. We just got to jump over that line, that is a fine line, of winning and losing, what it takes to be great. And we have the people here that are going to work hard, do everything they can within their means to make that happen. So I’m excited to get back to work. We knew this wasn’t going to be easy. We knew winning a championship each and every year, especially in the SEC, is going to be hard. We knew there were going to be challenges along with transitions, all that. No excuses. We have to continue to move forward. We have to continue to build. You know, that’s what this week is all about is taking that next step.