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The Tuscaloosa News
Does Kalen DeBoer feel his first Alabama football season was a 'success'?
- Story byThe Tuscaloosa News
- Does Kalen DeBoer feel his first Alabama football season was a 'success'?
TAMPA, Fla. — Kalen DeBoe r had faced a locker room like the one he saw at the ReliaQuest Bowl on Tuesday before.
He saw it after Alabama football's road loss to Vanderbilt , its road loss to Tennessee and its road loss to Oklahoma . It's a locker room of disappointment.
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But as DeBoer faced the reality of a 19-13 ReliaQuest Bowl defeat, one that ended a 16-season streak of 10 wins or more for a storied and historic Crimson Tide team, he first praised his players, "the guys that hung in there," that "stayed the course."
He focused on the things the average person doesn't see: the decisions made to stay after the retirement of legendary coach Nick Saban, the continued push through the "roller coaster" of the 2024 season, through the highs of Georgia and LSU , to the lows of the three road losses.
But was his first season in Tuscaloosa a success?
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There is a lot to learn from, DeBoer said. And that's where the "success" of the first season will stem from.
"As long as we learn from it, then, to me, it can be a success moving forward," DeBoer said. "We're going to take all these things that happened. There's some things that happened in the game (Tuesday) too that we got to learn from and make sure that those mistakes don't hurt us a year from now. I don't care if it's turnovers, penalties. It's everything.
"So, to me, it's a success if we move forward and we take advantage of the lessons, even though we don't want to learn those lessons sometimes, right? Because they're hard. We're going to learn from those lessons and move forward and be better next year because of it."
DeBoer left Raymond James Stadium tied for the most wins as a first-year Alabama football coach in school history, tying Frank Thomas' nine wins in 1931.
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But before he left his press conference, before he jumped on a golf cart with Alabama athletics director Greg Byrne and officially began his second year with the Crimson Tide, DeBoer made a promise to the Alabama players that had finished their last game.
"I know they are going to make us proud when they move onto the next level," DeBoer said. "And I promised them we will continue to make them proud with the fight and the standard of competitiveness they instilled in this program moving forward."
Colin Gay covers Alabama football for The Tuscaloosa News, part of the USA TODAY Network. Reach him at cgay@gannett.com or follow him @_ColinGay on X, formerly known as Twitter.
This article originally appeared on The Tuscaloosa News: Does Kalen DeBoer feel his first Alabama football season was a 'success'?
