No Stranger to Success: Who is New Alabama Football Coach Kalen DeBoer?

Alabama's new football coach brings a record of past successes with him to Tuscaloosa.

Once the dust settled on the first Alabama coaching search since Mal Moore brought Nick Saban to campus in 2007, the eyes of the college football world were squarely focused on the man selected to bear the momentous task of succeeding a coach many consider to be the greatest in the history of the sport.

That man is none other than Washington's Kalen DeBoer. Renowned for his offensive prowess, the 49-year-old South Dakota native emerged as the name at the end of as seismic and prominent a coaching search as anyone will likely ever see. He brings with him demonstrated success at multiple levels, including a national championship game appearance to cap off the 2023-24 campaign. Fewer than 48 hours after DeBoer's Huskies fell to Michigan in that climactic game, Saban announced he was retiring from coaching Alabama after 17 seasons.

A decade ago, DeBoer was the offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach at Eastern Michigan, home of the one-of-a-kind gray turf. He's now been entrusted with taking the reins of a global brand and a preeminent force in both college football and intercollegiate athletics as a whole. His coaching career began in 1997 when he stayed on at the University of Sioux Falls, his alma mater, as wide receivers coach. It was at that same stop that he got his first opportunity as a head coach eight years later, with an interceding two-year stint as a high school assistant coach, also in Sioux Falls. 

In five seasons as the Cougars' coach, he amassed 67 wins and three NAIA national championships. That got him a promotion to Division I, where he was the offensive coordinator at Southern Illinois from 2010-13. He continued his ascent through the coaching ranks when he joined Eastern Michigan for his first look at the FBS level. His final season there saw conference foe and in-state opponent Western Michigan take the coveted Group of Five bid to the New Year's Six, but in that year's meeting between the two teams, the Eagles were competitive and were defeated by the fewest points of any MAC team to face P.J. Fleck's Broncos in the regular season. 

DeBoer then joined Jeff Tedford and company at Fresno State in the same role he held at Eastern Michigan. Though he departed after two years, he'd soon be back, but the next part of his journey was a pivotal one. At Indiana in 2019, he became acquainted with the player that eventually helped shape his revitalization of the Washington program: Michael Penix Jr.

After Tedford stepped down at Fresno State owing to health concerns, DeBoer was tabbed as his replacement. His first FBS head coaching opportunity had taken shape. He went 12-6 in two seasons, winning nine games in 2021, before the Huskies called. In his only full season as the Bulldogs' head coach, DeBoer collected a pair of ranked wins and came within a touchdown of an Oregon team that won the Pac-12 North. Washington's hiring of Jimmy Lake to replace Chris Petersen was marred with tumult. That chapter culminated in an unceremonious close, and both stability and progress were needed. To that end, the school chose an offensive guru with a lot of upside— and he delivered.

With Penix Jr. as his quarterback, himself looking to remake his career after struggling with injuries in Bloomington, DeBoer won 11 games in 2022 and his team finished inside the top 10 in both end-of-season polls. The transformation had been swift. Just like that, college football fans began to get well acquainted with the name Kalen DeBoer. The promise was staggering. The Huskies came into the 2023 campaign as a Pac-12 favorite with national championship potential. They went undefeated through their first 14 games, winning the conference and defeating Oregon twice. Penix Jr. finished second in Heisman Trophy voting, and the team had one of the best offensive lines in the entire country. Only by the blade of the buzzsaw that was No. 1 Michigan was Washington's bid for all the marbles halted. 

In stepping to the unenviable undertaking of finding someone deemed fit to follow Saban, Alabama went with an individual who has won a lot and done so at multiple different levels of college football. DeBoer is 104-12 as a head coach, good for an 89.7 winning percentage. He's never lost more than three games in any single campaign, and that includes the time he and his team stared down a pandemic season while he was a first-time FBS head coach in 2020. In his two seasons with Washington, he was an impressive 25-3. DeBoer earned multiple Coach of the Year honors at the national level for the job he did with the 2023-24 Huskies and was also recognized as the Pac-12 Coach of the Year in each of the past two seasons.

For all this success, the prospect of filling Saban's shoes remains daunting. 206 wins, nine conference championships and six national title crowns are not accomplishments that are anywhere near the category of easily replicable— or, for that matter, replaceable. In hiring DeBoer, the Crimson Tide has someone well established: multiple years' experience at a Power Five school and demonstrated success in the multiple head coaching jobs on his ledger. 

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