Kalen DeBoer reflects on hardest part of first season coaching at Alabama

After missing the College Football Playoffs in his first season in charge at Alabama, Kalen DeBoer knows the pressure is there. He can feel it.

He felt it in his first season with the Crimson Tide, though perhaps in ways you might not expect. DeBoer was asked at the SEC spring meetings on Tuesday about what the toughest part of his first season was. He opened up on that topic.

“I think a lot of it was just the early piece,” he said. “Just understanding what the timing of it was in January. I think that was the hardest part.”

In other words, managing all the things that happen when a season ends was difficult. That’s players entering the transfer portal. It’s trying to sign a quality high school class. It’s evaluating and hiring and firing coaches.

All of that was a mad dash at Alabama last year. So despite going 9-4 in his first year in charge, Kalen DeBoer pointed to the January mayhem as the most significant hurdle.

“The season and the ups and downs, I’ve been a part of that,” he said. “I think a first year is always extremely hard because there’s gonna be things that come your way that you just know are going to be hard to handle. And a lot of times it’s the wins and the losses that I’m talking about. I think last year it didn’t play itself out like you want, but I think a lot of the things that came weren’t so far fetched when it came to what you expect a first-year season in the SEC to be at Alabama.

“It’s going to be a grind. It’s going to test you as far as staying the course and just test our team as far as sticking together. That’s going to be every year and it just is on another level, I guess, when you really look at guys leaving the program and not getting an opportunity to really bring too many in, just because of the timing of when the transition happened.”

Alabama and Kalen DeBoer will have had a complete chance to evaluate and vet talent out of the transfer portal this cycle. They’ve had a full year to focus on high school recruiting.

Will that equate to taking the next step on the field? Competing in the College Football Playoff? Well, it might be a touch early to answer those questions.

“But we’re in a good spot right now because I think our guys have really… we’ve kind of really found out who wants to be here,” Kalen DeBoer said. “They’ve really dug in deep. We’ve got a great mix of upperclassmen that understand what it takes mixed with some young guys that either got their feet wet last year or are coming in and have been really accepted in a way that they feel appreciated by the guys who have gone through it. So really looking forward to this team this next six to eight months.”