Now that the dust has settled from the 2025 college football season and all the hand-wringing is over, it is a chance to look back on the Crimson Tide campaign of Kalen DeBoer’s Year 2 with a sober mind. Brent, Josh, and C B offer their thoughts on the past, present, and future of Alabama football.
Brent: Zabien Brown
C B: Ty Simpson
Josh: Germie Bernard
Brent: Ty Simpson
C B: Ty Simpson
Josh: Germie Bernard
Brent: (second place) Justin Jefferson
C B: Bray Hubbard
Josh: Bray Hubbard
Brent: Josh Cuevas
C B: Josh Cuevas
Josh: Josh Cuevas
Brent: Yhonzae Pierre
C B: Dijon Lee
Josh: Justin Jefferson
Brent: Lotzier Brooks
C B: Dijon Lee
Josh: Dijon Lee
Brent: Tennessee
C B: Tennessee, then Vandy, then Okie CFP gae
Josh: at Georgia
Brent: Florida State
C B: Florida State
Josh: Indiana
1) With Year 2 of the Kalen DeBoer tenure coming to an end, would you consider the 2025 season a failure, a slight failure, somewhere in the middle, a slight success, or a full success?
Brent: Overall, a slight success. This was a more resilient team, a more cohesive team, and a much more disciplined team than a year ago. All of those are very positive things in terms of coaching. They fell apart at the end with a hurt QB, but…. That’s the nature of this offense. When you rest everything on the QB, then the team goes as he does. There’s a couple of major gaping flaws that have to be figured out somehow, but for the first time in 5 years, Alabama wasn’t the team with undisciplined penalty problems.
C B: The final results are not what Bama fans are totally pleased with, but it was a slight success. The highlights were the Crimson Tide beating Tennessee and Auburn, reaching the playoff and getting revenge on Oklahoma. In addition, the Tide’s throttling of Vanderbilt kept that jerk Diego Pavia out of the CFP, which is a victory for all of America. Alabama is still relevant and still in the national title discussions.
Josh: I’ll put it in the “slight success” column. A two-loss regular season is an improvement from a three-loss regular season. They made it to Atlanta and won a playoff game. If this is the ceiling for the program under DeBoer then it won’t be acceptable, but in year two it is.
2) DeBoer did not ask our opinions, but should RB coach Robert Gillespie be let go?
Brent: Absolutely, without a doubt, yes. Gillespie took over at Alabama in 2021, when Brian Robinson was a senior. He also got Jahmyr Gibbs as a 1-year rental transfer. Outside of that, every single back that Alabama has signed since 2021 (the players that Gillespie should be given credit for coaching up/developing) has underperformed at best or flunked out at worst. Camar Wheaton? Never saw the field. Jam Miller? Top 100 back that underwhelmed in two years as a starter. Justice Haynes? 5-star that was just ok, then left. Richard Young? Total bust. Kevin Riley, Daniel Hill, and AK Dear? Maybe they’ll amount to more next season.
5 years of bad results that have been getting worse every year. It’s time.
CB: Tuscaloosa has long been a haven for running backs to show their wares. However, the Tide has had plenty of swings and misses since Gillespie came on board in 2021 in both recruiting and performances. The last two NFL caliber Tide backs were Brian Robinson who was blessed with a 5th season in 2021 after four years on the sidelines, and the already polished Jahmyr Gibbs who came over in the transfer portal in 2022. Since then, it has not been a bright spot for the crimson and white. The rushing attack has been going downhill culminating in this season’s embarrassing 125th ranked rushing offense. The Tide had -3 yards in the SEC Championship Game, 28 in a CFP win over Oklahoma, and 23 versus Indiana. That is not acceptable. He should have been fired on the tarmac. Additionally, Gillespie’s forte is supposed to be recruiting. He has hauled in some 5-stars, but most of them have gone bust. It is time for a new voice in that spot.
Josh: I’m always the wrong person to ask about assistant coaches, because in my book the head coach is accountable for the whole program. We don’t know what the dynamics are behind the scenes, and will never truly know if a player’s limitations are caused by evaluation, coaching, effort, or all of the above. What we can observe is that the running backs need to add more value to the offense.
3) What other changes would you like to see from Alabama during the offseason?
Brent: Alabama changed the OL coach and totally overhauled that position group. That had to be priority 1, and they did it. I’d like to see Gillespie changed, too, as I mentioned above. That’s it, though. I’m happy with the defensive staff (I’ve even come around to Freddie Roach a little more over the last year after we saw the growth from London Simmons and Isaia Faga). I am getting very close to questioning the effectiveness of the strength and conditioning staff as well – but that one’s hard to truly judge as fans.
C B: First off, why has special teams coordinator Jay Nunez not been shown the door? Beyond that, I’d like to see a whole attitude change from top to bottom. I have seen some quit from these last two teams like I haven’t seen since 2007. There is a plethora of former Tide players who are chomping at the bit to come in and toughen up these players and coaches. Invite some of these guys in as special consultants for a day, a week, a month. Embrace the past. DeBoer has Nick Frickin’ Saban right there on campus and I would bet he still beats everyone into the office every day. Do you think Saban be opposed to watching film, or sitting in on meetings with the end result being offering his advice? He is the genuine bona fide G.O.A.T. of college football! Swallow your pride and let him put his fingerprints back on this program.
Josh: The low hanging fruit here is that Alabama needs to be able to run the football better. It seems that many of the changes that need to be made are already in motion: a rebuilt offensive line and a fresh voice to coach them along with a dynamic freshman talent at running back added to the mix. The defense should be in good shape, so getting that offensive unit functional is the primary goal this offseason.
4) What level of optimism or pessimism do you have for the 2026 campaign?
Brent: I think I’m slightly above neutral on the optimistic side of things. I think Alabama will have a solid top-15 defense, and I’m not too worried about them. The special teams should be night and day better with the new specialists. The offensive line was totally overhauled, and if they can just be borderline competent at run blocking, it’ll be a big change.
The crux of it all is Keelon Russell. Like I said, DeBoer/Grubb’s offense is one that will only go as the QB goes. It puts the weight of the entire game on him every game. If he’s up to it, you get Michael Penix at Washington. If not, you get late season collapses. I don’t think that Austin Mack is that guy. So if Keelon Russell is, and it shows early, then I think this team will be a juggernaut. If Russell isn’t…. Then it’ll be much like last year.
C B: Nick Saban spoiled me. I expect perfection and this program is far from perfection. There are some serious cracks in the foundation and DeBoer probably has not shaken up the staff enough. He did okay in the transfer portal, but all he did was replace departing guys – not get better. I am not expecting a losing season, but it is the crucial Year 3 when programs are supposed to take that next step. If he has another season in 2026 like he did in 2025, would that be deemed a success? I want to get back to being an elite program that teams are scared to play. And I am slightly pessimistic that that will not happen in the coming season.
Josh: In this era of extreme roster turnover, there is no way to know how things will look. Much like the NFL, you’re going to see more parity and volatility from year to year in the SEC. Week one is sure to be weird most seasons, so it probably makes sense to open up with a cupcake or two. The schedule sets up favorably in that regard next season and will hopefully allow the Tide time to find their footing before the October gauntlet.
5) What needs to happen in 2026 for you to continue to support DeBoer?
Brent: I’ve been impressed by DeBoer’s intentionality at correcting things that aren’t working. He had a horribly penalized team a year ago, and then made 2025 Alabama’s least penalized season since 2018. The offensive line and special teams were massive liabilities in 2025, and he’s overhauled the roster with transfers for those two groups (and changed the OL coach) over the past few weeks.
As long as we don’t see backsliding, I’m happy with him. I tend to think that Alabama’s fall from the perch actually happened in Santa Clara in 2019, with the final stake being the loss to Georgia in the 2021 National Championship, and that DeBoer is trying to fix some of the same problems that Saban couldn’t his last two seasons.
Another 10-2 season is perfectly acceptable, even if it would leave me wanting for better. Ideally, I’d like to see the blowout losses go away, though. That keeps happening, and my leash will get much shorter.
C B: With the inclusion of Oklahoma and Texas and the new nine SEC game schedules, I don’t know if undefeated seasons are possible anymore. So, a few losses can be expected for the foreseeable future. But disasters like we had in Tallahassee and the quit that we saw in Atlanta are not acceptable.
Both lines of scrimmages need to get much tougher. Play psychological games with them if you have to. Just get these guys angry like the guy across the line from him is trying to swipe his mama’s wig off her head. To that point, we need receivers to be more physical. For many years, Alabama was blessed with receivers who took pride in blocking DBs into the third row of the stands. Where did that go?
My kingdom for a running game! And not just from the quarterback. As mentioned, Gillespie needs to go. I am so tired of the “two yards and a cloud of dust”. Bama has the promise of AK Dear and Ezavier Crowell to go with the hard-headed running of Daniel Hill. Time for excuses are over.
Josh: More toughness from the team, particularly when it comes to running the football. And, of course, Alabama should be expecting a 12-team playoff berth pretty much every year.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
