Kalen DeBoer reacts to Alabama dropping in College Football Playoff rankings

Tuesday night’s reveal of the latest College Football Playoff Top 25 rankings saw Alabama drop six spots — from fourth to No. 10 — following last Saturday’s 23-21 home loss to new-No. 8 Oklahoma in Tuscaloosa. It was a steep fall for a Crimson Tide (8-2, 6-1 SEC) squad that now faces a potential do-or-die play-in opportunity in next week’s Iron Bowl rivalry game at Auburn.

And while Alabama’s slide down the Playoff rankings drew plenty of criticism — especially for landing behind No. 9 Notre Dame (8-2), which has just one current Top 25 win compared to the Tide’s four — Tuesday night was business as usual for second-year coach Kalen DeBoer.

“I guess my whole focus, and this is the honest-to-God truth, I didn’t even see the show. I saw the rankings pop up on the ESPN app on my phone, took a quick look at it and went back to work,” DeBoer said Wednesday on the SEC Coaches Teleconference. “Didn’t read into anything, I just know that we have a ton of quality wins. I know they look strongly at the losses, but last week was against a very good football team. And I think we’ve played a lot of really good football, we’ve shown consistency and improvement throughout the year, and a lot of improvement.”

Arkansas athletic director and new College Football Playoff selection committee chairman Hunter Yurachek defended the decision to place Notre Dame ahead of Alabama by pointing to the Crimson Tide’s losses — to unranked Florida State in Week 1 and to the eighth-ranked Sooners last Saturday. Meanwhile, the independent Fighting Irish have won eight straight since opening the season 0-2 against No. 13 Miami and No. 3 Texas A&M, all be a combined four points.

“Really, when you break these teams down and the comparison (between) Notre Dame and Alabama, Notre Dame has two losses to teams that are within the Top 13 – a three-point loss against Miami to start the season and then a one-point loss against Texas A&M,” Yurachek said Tuesday night. “Alabama, obviously, has the two-point loss at home last week to Oklahoma, but they had that loss at the beginning of the season, 31-17, at Florida State – a team that’s now 5-5. Florida State was up in that game 24-7 and they held to Alabama to less than 100 yards rushing in that game. That, really, was a sign of some of the struggles Alabama was going to have rushing the ball.”

It’s because of those issues that DeBoer prefers to focus more on what is still within Alabama’s control rather than subjective Playoff rankings voted on by the 12-member CFP selection committee. The 10th-ranked Crimson Tide return to the field Saturday against FCS opponent Eastern Illinois before closing out the regular season next week in the Iron Bowl. And given its head-to-head win over No. 4 Georgia (9-1, 7-1 SEC) earlier this season, a victory over the rival Tigers (4-6, 1-6 SEC) in Auburn would punch Alabama’s ticket to Atlanta to play for the 2025 SEC Championship the following weekend.

“We’ve got to do our job here the rest of the way and make sure we keep taking care of business,” DeBoer continued. “We have a lot of things that we are (still) playing for, but the main thing is we keep improving because there’s certainly areas we continue to address and stress. Obviously the turnover thing popped up this weekend, something that we’ve been very good at. So that’s one example of any area we’ve got to continue to work.”