Kalen DeBoer updates where Alabama is in recruiting a year after taking job

There is an expectation that winning teams are among the best recruiting teams in the country. That’s particularly true for the Alabama Crimson Tide, where head coach Kalen DeBoer hopes to put the best possible team for his second season with the team.

When DeBoer was first hired, recruiting was a concern for some, given that he didn’t have personal ties to the SEC or experience recruiting in the South. Still, he’s worked to calm those concerns since then. He even recently appeared on Always College Football to discuss where recruiting stands at this point for Alabama.

“Especially regionally and down here in the Southeast, anywhere in the South is our recruiting territory,” DeBoer said. “There’s just much more familiarity, you know, all that exists. There’s the relationships that we’ve taken to the next level. I think I’ve got a good group and a good staff around me, whether it’s on the field staff, off the field staff.”

DeBoer balanced his staff when he first got to Alabama. That meant working with coaches he hadn’t worked with before, like defensive coordinator Kane Wommack, who had ties to the region. At the same time, a coach like offensive coordinator Ryan Grubb gives DeBoer someone to work with whom he’s already comfortable with.

“I knew that coming in that had to be, again, balance is the word I would probably use, of guys who I wanted that I knew well,” DeBoer said. “But also ones that we needed on staff that knew the Southeast and could help us hit the ground running. I thought we did a good job last year.”

Now, DeBoer has turned to looking forward to building Alabama. That means being prepared when you recruit to replace players multiple years down the line, not just from one year to the next. At the same time, this comes amid massive shifts around college sports in how you recruit. That includes NIL and the Transfer Portal.

“I think this year, now, it’s just continuing to fill in the gaps. You’re going to recruit across the board, every position, I think every single year,” DeBoer said. “But now it’s, how do you continue to add? Where are the areas where we know exactly what we’re losing next year? Who we might lose to the NFL? How we’ve got to get better with the recruiting? Who can play early in their career and help us? So, it’s I think just another level of decision-making, also the recruiting process. It doesn’t matter where you’re at in the country, a lot of the same principles apply when it comes to recruiting. It’s relationships. Obviously, there’s an NIL factor these days.”

Next up in the recruiting calendar is June. That’s become a major month for visits and will be the focus for DeBoer and his staff.

“For every coach across the country, that has evolved, and the timeline of recruiting and how it’s sped up and how many official visits we’re gonna have here in June is also a thing that didn’t exist two, three years ago at the level it is now. It wasn’t that you weren’t doing summer visits,” DeBoer said. “But the number of how many you’re doing now is much different every weekend here through June. It’s going to be locked and loaded on official visits and what those schedules look like. I think we’re much further along and on the same page. I feel like we’ve got a good grasp of the guys that we’re really attacking who we have strong relationships with, who also feel good about us.”

Ultimately, DeBoer’s recruiting success speaks for itself. In the 2025 cycle, the first full recruiting class for DeBoer at Alabama, he brought in the third-ranked class in the country.