No one is a great fit for the Alabama job. After all, replacing the legend of Nick Saban is downright impossible. Can a new coach win six national titles? Can he win 11 games every season and endure that a 10-win season is a down year? Nope. But Alabama hired a guy who’s as close to perfect as it gets.
DeBoer is young, he’s innovative and he’s not afraid. While he will certainly lean on Saban and his expertise as the goat will still be in the building, he is his own man and will create the team in his own image. This is a guy who took a 4-8 Washington team and brought them to the national title game in two years. This is a guy who is 104-12 as a head football coach and has coached up average talent to exceed expectations. He’s a developer of players, he finds players who are a perfect fit for what he wants to do and now he has the keys to a Lamborghini.
The best example of DeBoer’s ability is not his NAIA wins or his time at Fresno State or Washington. It’s his stint at Indiana as the OC in 2019 where his offense finished third in the Big Ten with 433.2 yards per game. This is with mainly two and low-three-star talent, like Michael Penix Jr. who he developed into the player that emerged in the COVID season as a budding superstar. Imagine what DeBoer can do with four and five-star talent?
I’m not saying DeBoer will win national titles and be dominant in the SEC. With Texas and Oklahoma coming in things will only get harder in the conference and no one will match what Saban did. But if expectations can be tempered a bit and perhaps a clunky 9-3 or 8-4 season can be overlooked as he creates the roster in his image, the long-term prognosis is good.
What’s needed to replace Saban is the following — a great coach, a developer of talent, and a guy with thick skin who can handle the bumps along the way. Recruiting is also going to be key at the high school and portal level and that’s a huge question mark for DeBoer with zero ties to the Southeast. But Saban has set up Alabama to essentially recruit itself for a few years so the talent won’t be an issue. And DeBoer checks every other box.
Dan Lanning, Steve Sarkisian, and Mike Norvell would have been great, but I think the guy people know less about might be the perfect fit.
