In taking the Alabama job ahead of the 2024 season, Kalen DeBoer was signing up for one of the most pressure-filled positions in all of college football. The Crimson Tide job has been one of the sport's most prominent for years, and DeBoer opted to be the man after the man, stepping in for the retired Nick Saban, who won six of his seven national championships in Tuscaloosa.
Saban's success directly informs why DeBoer now finds himself on a seat that is heating up just one game into his second season, after a stunning Week 1 loss to Florida State. Never one to knock his successor, Saban praised DeBoer during a Friday appearance on The Pat McAfee Show, saying that he knows he is trying to right the ship.
“Kalen is a really good guy, he’s a good coach,” Saban said. “He’s always had success no matter where he’s been. Maybe he hasn’t had this kind of scrutiny in the past. But if you’re going to be successful, you’ve got to be able to self assess and figure out what can I do better? I know he is reaching out to a lot of people trying to do that. Hopefully they get it turned around this week and develop some confidence on this team so they can move forward in a positive way.”
As a coach, Saban was famous for ability to use losses as valuable teaching moments, helping launch his Alabama teams to the next level. Just two of Saban's seven national championship teams went undefeated. He stressed just how important this moment between Weeks 1 and 2, coming off of the Florida State loss, will be for DeBoer.
"They gotta stay focused on what they need to do to teach and get better, create roles for players on their team, and how they can support the team," Saban told McAfee. "... My message was, basically, when you have a negative consequence and you don't teach and do a good job of identifying what do we need to fix, so the players have something they can relate to. If you don't teach, it affects morale in a negative way. So I think you gotta be positive, and show the players, 'When we did it right, here's the success we had. When we didn't do it right, when it was even one player who didn't do it right, maybe that's why they had success.’”
"One thing about coaching at Alabama is they expect you to win every game..
— Pat McAfee (@PatMcAfeeShow) September 5, 2025
There's a high expectation & the standard is really high for what you're supposed to accomplish..
You need to protect your players from that"
Coach Saban #PMSLive pic.twitter.com/aU9GQcy5ck
From his vantage point at ESPN, Saban doesn't know what precisely went wrong for Alabama last Saturday, but believes Florida State's immediate answer to Alabama's game-opening touchdown drive changed the "whole psychological disposition" of the Crimson Tide team. He acknowledged that the pressure and anxiety that comes with the expectations of the Alabama program may have played a part, and that DeBoer needs to find a way to "protect" his players from them and keep them focused on the task at hand, one play at a time.
"One thing about coaching at Alabama, they expect you to win every game," Saban said. "And there's a high expectation and the standard is really, really high for what you're supposed to accomplish and what you're supposed to do. You need to protect your players from that and give them a different way to compete in the game so they're not looking at the scoreboard, they're not worrying about the outcome. They can stay focused on the things they need to do to compete in the game for 60 minutes, and play one play at a time so they're not worried about that. Because that's all they hear everywhere they go, on social media. They're expect to win. So you can't let that creep in, and that anxiety about being outcome oriented, affect their performance."
Legendary figures like Bear Bryant built those expectations in Tuscaloosa, and Saban proved that they were attainable in the modern age of college football. Now the weight of those expectations falls on DeBoer, who has been a winner at every other level of the sport. Whether he'll be able to shoulder them and ultimately become the next great Alabama coach is up in the air, and just 14 games into his tenure, he may already be at an inflection point.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as Nick Saban Says Kalen DeBoer Must 'Protect' Alabama Players From Outside Pressure.
