Some Context (regarding coach DeBoer’s start)

[tusks_n_raider]

Reading this thread has given me an epiphany. Could there possibly be some issue/conflict about the Washington transfers?

Just pure speculation on my part.

That hasn't even crossed my mind.

I have barely noticed Brailsford in games and I mean that as a compliment. Just on that alone he's probably been the best and most consistent OL this year.

Germie is our #2 WR in both Recs and Yards and a lot of that is him getting YAC.

Mack is the QB4 behind both Ty and Dylan.

So they have either been one of our best players on the team or down the depth chart.

I'm not seeing Wash transfers on the field taking reps from a more deserving player that would create problems at all.

 

[Slowpoke Catracho]

Average Penalties per game:

College Football Stats - College FB Team Penalties per Game | TeamRankings.com

College Football penalties per game, by team.

www.teamrankings.com

 

[81usaf92]

I said prior to DeBoer being hired that he would obviously take the job because Washington was going to have to rebuild. I think part of the issue is we are dealing with a bit of a chicken and the egg type situation.

I became familiar with DeBoer's coaching last year because I was closely following Washington (lots of late games they nearly lost as I desperately cheered for them to do so, so Alabama had a better playoff chance). I was already familiar with Penix from 2020. I watched him throw for 5 TDs and 491 yards against Ohio State as he single-handedly kept Indiana in the game against Ohio State (Indiana lost by 7).

The issue was he kept getting injured and, well he played at Indiana. So, when I saw him having success at Washington, my first thought wasn't that it was a great coaching job, just that he finally got a chance to show what he could do. He to me was already obviously a great talent.

So, does Penix owe his success to DeBoer or does DeBoer owe his success to Penix? As you alluded to, Penix basically fell in his lap, he just happened to have been at Indiana the same time as Penix (DeBoer wasn't even at Indiana when Penix signed). I suspect it as a little of both, but it's another thing that's not repeatable. He doesn't have another phone-a-friend to use on a Penix caliber QB.

Which brings us to the fact that DeBoer is 17-8 at the FBS level without Penix. Penix's record as a starter at Indiana was actually 12-5 I believe (that includes games he was injured in). So, Penix had a better FBS winning percentage away from Washington than DeBoer has away from him.


There's a lot of talk of DeBoer's record, but it really doesn't look so remarkable under those circumstances does it? This year the excuse seems to be yeah, well he had to deal with an inherited QB, while part of my misgivings about the hire was yeah well Penix would have made a lot of coaches look good.

I remember you saying the same thing about the nate oats hiring when you found out that we didn’t offer Billy Donovan. So maybe these assumptions are a bit premature and slanted to prove a preconceived point. Because right now the mental gymnastics you are doing in propping up Dabo and Les miles while dunking on Deboer relentlessly in year 1. I mean I’m half surprised that you haven’t said “we should have hired Jimbo since he had a 4 year run in the ACC, and because the last fired aTm coach we hired won a championship here”.

I mean seriously you went on and on about DeBoer’s record recruiting when he was hired and said “a tiger doesn’t change his stripes”. Yet nothing about that now. Now we are onto he is a horrible disciplinarian and owes much his success to Penix in a bad conference. Yet when anyone brings up Dabo’s run with two generational quarterbacks in a bad conference…. Nothing.

I don’t know if Deboer will succeed here and neither do you in year 1. What I do know is that while Saban didn’t leave him a cupboard anywhere close to empty… he did leave him a lot of rotten food in that cupboard that even he was having a hard time getting rid of.

 

[cdub55]

A few things to chew on:

Penix rushed for 8 total yards last year.

Penix threw for nearly 5000 yards.

Milroe against SEC competition has the worst touchdown to interception ratio among SEC QB's

Milroe has rushed for 57 yards in the past three games.

Deboer obviously prefers a pocket QB who can disperse the ball to his athletes. Milroe has been anything but that.

Penix literally was a video game game last year. Milroe has looked more like a cartoon this year.

 

[spidermayin]

9-3 beating both Georgia and Auburn, but losing to both Tennessee and LSU in close competitive games. That's more than acceptable as first season accomplishments in a transition year. The OP made some really great points and I think we all need to have a little more patience. You can't expect a new coach to come in here the first year and have everything running like a well oiled machine. Give him time to fill the team with all of his guys and let's see where that takes us. He's been a winner every where he's coached. Give the guy all the chance he deserves. We can still end up going 10-2, but you know, things are going to have to change with our play.

 

[KrAzY3]

I remember you saying the same thing about the nate oats hiring when you found out that we didn’t offer Billy Donovan. So maybe these assumptions are a bit premature and slanted to prove a preconceived point. Because right now the mental gymnastics you are doing in propping up Dabo and Les miles while dunking on Deboer relentlessly in year 1. I mean I’m half surprised that you haven’t said “we should have hired Jimbo since he had a 4 year run in the ACC, and because the last fired aTm coach we hired won a championship here”.

I mean seriously you went on and on about DeBoer’s record recruiting when he was hired and said “a tiger doesn’t change his stripes”. Yet nothing about that now. Now we are onto he is a horrible disciplinarian and owes much his success to Penix in a bad conference. Yet when anyone brings up Dabo’s run with two generational quarterbacks in a bad conference…. Nothing.

I don’t know if Deboer will succeed here and neither do you in year 1. What I do know is that while Saban didn’t leave him a cupboard anywhere close to empty… he did leave him a lot of rotten food in that cupboard that even he was having a hard time getting rid of.

I thought we were actually doing pretty well, but the last couple of responses have been more contentious. I'm not bringing up Jalen Hurts, I'm not bringing up my position on NIL, or the playoff, or trying to take this all over the place, and I'm certainly not trying to take digs at you but I will respond to see if may be we can get this back on track since I didn't respond to your last post to try to not go in circles.

Nate Oats: Yeah, I did prefer Billy Donovan and I'm not overly apologetic for preferring multiple title winners. Having said that, I did warm up to Nate Oats pretty rapidly, you can if you want to find complimentary posts about Nate I made before he ever coached a game at Alabama. All I want is success for the program.

Recruiting: Yes, I was critical of DeBoer's recruiting because it had been pretty non-existent. I also repeatedly said that the boosters desperately needed to start writing NIL checks and I said this before Downs left for instance. I also mentioned the "Saban discount" I believed Alabama had been receiving and I've since seen reporting about that very thing. Either way, that seems to have been resolved and I don't complain about things that seem to be sorted out.

Sayin: If we're just trying to dunk on me, let's bring up Sayin. I re-posted something unsubstantiated basically saying he got the cold shoulder from DeBoer, and pretty quickly realized I was letting my unhappiness with Saban's departure cloud my judgement. I took a time out from the board for a while after that.

Anyway, if I point out that DeBoer's record without Penix isn't that great, and you point out Dabo won his titles with NFL starter caliber QBs, then aren't we basically making the same points? And if we're making the same points, but you openly dislike Dabo and I openly stated a prefference for Dabo (with the caveat that he had to work with transfers and NIL), what are we arguing about really? Just the style play we prefer? It is kind of pointless to go back and forth about that, which is why I didn't respond to your previous post, it wasn't intended as a slight.

To reiterate though, I desperately hope DeBoer succeeds at Alabama (and I've always said he was better than a lot of options). There's been ups and downs so far, and if not for the Vanderbilt loss (which I think was squarely on the coaches, especially if you consider the coach induced pentalty that lead to a touchdown) I would be pleased with things as they stand now. Unfortunately though, I don't know which way things will go and I'm not going to pretend I don't see any issues. I'd be as happy as anyone else here if DeBoer wins out though, believe me I want success and I have no problem whatsoever with the idea that I might be worrying about nothing, I really hope I am.

 

[CB4]

9-3 beating both Georgia and Auburn, but losing to both Tennessee and LSU in close competitive games. That's more than acceptable as first season accomplishments in a transition year. The OP made some really great points and I think we all need to have a little more patience. You can't expect a new coach to come in here the first year and have everything running like a well oiled machine. Give him time to fill the team with all of his guys and let's see where that takes us. He's been a winner every where he's coached. Give the guy all the chance he deserves. We can still end up going 10-2, but you know, things are going to have to change with our play.

I would agree with you on “cutting DeBoer slack” this first year, but you’re forgetting a loss to a Vanderbilt team in 25k seat stadium when half of crowd (or more) were Alabama fans and working on the assumption that we beat Missouri and Oklahoma (in Norman). Unless a light comes on for this offense, Missouri this week will be a dogfight. And as pathetic as Oklahoma’s offense has been, they have more than enough defense to keep them in the game.

I’m thinking 8-4 or even 7-5 is more realistic. And the ham fisted way we won against USCe at home doesn’t give me a bunch of confidence in that last game against Auburn.

 

[davefrat]

I would agree with you on “cutting DeBoer slack” this first year, but you’re forgetting a loss to a Vanderbilt team in 25k seat stadium when half of crowd (or more) were Alabama fans and working on the assumption that we beat Missouri and Oklahoma (in Norman). Unless a light comes on for this offense, Missouri this week will be a dogfight. And as pathetic as Oklahoma’s offense has been, they have more than enough defense to keep them in the game.

I’m thinking 8-4 or even 7-5 is more realistic. And the ham fisted way we won against USCe at home doesn’t give me a bunch of confidence in that last game against Auburn.

At this point in their season, it wouldn't surprise me if every week Auburn is only preparing for us, and if that's good enough to beat some of the remaining teams on their schedule, so be it.

Hugh knows their season is done and the only saving grace would be beating us.

I totally believe he would risk losing all the rest of their games if he thought he had a realistic chance of beating us.

 

[spidermayin]

I would agree with you on “cutting DeBoer slack” this first year, but you’re forgetting a loss to a Vanderbilt team in 25k seat stadium when half of crowd (or more) were Alabama fans and working on the assumption that we beat Missouri and Oklahoma (in Norman). Unless a light comes on for this offense, Missouri this week will be a dogfight. And as pathetic as Oklahoma’s offense has been, they have more than enough defense to keep them in the game.

I’m thinking 8-4 or even 7-5 is more realistic. And the ham fisted way we won against USCe at home doesn’t give me a bunch of confidence in that last game against Auburn.

Worst case is 7-5. Vandy is good enough this year that you wouldn't be shocked if they beat anyone in the SEC aside from the two top teams. We've played bad football the past 3 games, but we've also shown we can beat the best team in America if we just put it all together. Just have to find a way to do it for a whole game. We've lost that spark the past 3 games though.

 

[Bamabuzzard]

Regardless of talent, three to four losses for first-year coaches aren't and shouldn't be that shocking. Some of you must have never played sports or coached sports to understand, that there's a difference between a roster and a team and there are some elements of the game that exist on every level of the game, whether it be baseball, football, basketball, etc.

We aren't a good "team" though we have roster talent. We have a brand new coaching staff putting in brand new systems and mountain loads of change have hit the program and the players this season. People in general don't handle mass amount of change very well, so when you get mass amounts of change to a group of people who are supposed to be functioning as one unit, this is what you get. Areas of dysfunction until the new staff and new systems settle in. I was hoping for 10-2 and in a perfect world 12-0. But now that I realize we were unable to avoid the inevitable transition curve, I can see us going 9-3 all the way down to 7-5, all depending on where we go from here. But we are definitely a team and program in transition, so it is what it is. So in other words, this is normal.

 

[CB4]

Worst case is 7-5. Vandy is good enough this year that you wouldn't be shocked if they beat anyone in the SEC aside from the two top teams. We've played bad football the past 3 games, but we've also shown we can beat the best team in America if we just put it all together. Just have to find a way to do it for a whole game. We've lost that spark the past 3 games though.

I think you’re giving Vandy way too much credit. Certainly Pavia, bringing in Jerry Kill as an offensive consultant and Tim Beck as OC has Vandy performing at a much higher level than years past, but they are still a middle of the pack SEC program. This Vandy team still lost to Georgia State and was tied 14-14 with Ball State going into 4th quarter. A bunch of credit is given to beating NC State (currently near the bottom of the ACC) and Kentucky (a team that just got destroyed by a Billy Napier coached Florida team). This 5-2 Vanderbilt team is likely to finish this season no better than 6-6. Great by Vanderbilt standards, but not what many want to give them credit for being after beating us and Kentucky. Even what I thought was “quality” performance against Missouri in the OT loss now pales when you see Mizzou destroyed by TAMU and struggling to win late against Auburn at home.

Vanderbilt is still Vanderbilt. Better? Yes but little excuses for that loss IMO. I can cut DeBoer a bunch of slack for the loss this past weekend, but Vanderbilt? Not so much.

 

[Cruloc]

So we've got what left....

#21 Missouri (6-1)
at #8 LSU (6-1)
Mercer
at Oklahoma (4-3)
Auburn (2-5)

We are a dumpster fire right now.

Missouri isn't bad at all....if Milroe throws more picks, we lose
LSU is improving...Milroe on the road in Baton Rouge....we lose
Mercer....win
Oklahoma has a defense but no offense....Milroe on the road....who knows
Auburn has an ok defense and will be prepping for us for a month....who knows.

We are favored by 14 over Missouri. Why exactly? We may be in implosion watch at this point.

 

[Bamabuzzard]

So we've got what left....

#21 Missouri (6-1)
at #8 LSU (6-1)
Mercer
at Oklahoma (4-3)
Auburn (2-5)

We are a dumpster fire right now.

Missouri isn't bad at all....if Milroe throws more picks, we lose
LSU is improving...Milroe on the road in Baton Rouge....we lose
Mercer....win
Oklahoma has a defense but no offense....Milroe on the road....who knows
Auburn has an ok defense and will be prepping for us for a month....who knows.

We are favored by 14 over Missouri. Why exactly? We may be in implosion watch at this point.

I see us losing two to three of those games and if it gets bad enough, four. Going forward I'm looking at how the team and staff respond. As of now, I'm chalking LSU up as about a 90% chance we lose. That team is getting a lot better and fast.

 

[BamaLuver]

DeBoer has to go ...

 

[tusks_n_raider]

I see us losing two to three of those games and if it gets bad enough, four. Going forward I'm looking at how the team and staff respond. As of now, I'm chalking LSU up as about a 90% chance we lose. That team is getting a lot better and fast.

I agree with you about how perilous our remaining schedule is..

My question if you feel comfortable addressing it...

Do you think things could get that bad because we don't make an obvious roster decision soon or because things are overall beyond fixable even by making that change this season?

 

[bvandegraff]

Those sorts of ratings are great, but it really says more about how good Saban was at recruiting than it does about the talent of this team. You can recruit all the 4* and 5* players you want, but you still have to develop them, and olayer development has been lacking for several years now at many positions. Sorry, but Bama is not the 2nd most talented team in the country right now.

Yep. I'm assuming those numbers are based on recruiting ratings, which mean next to nothing when these kids start playing CFB.

 

[Bamabuzzard]

I agree with you about how perilous our remaining schedule is..

My question if you feel comfortable addressing it...

Do you think things could get that bad because we don't make an obvious roster decision soon or because things are overall beyond fixable even by making that change this season?

Roster decision in that we ask people to leave the team or make a change on the roster depth chart where the starter is now not the starter?

 

[tusks_n_raider]

Roster decision in that we ask people to leave the team or make a change on the roster depth chart where the starter is now not the starter?

Depth chart switch.

 

[Bamabuzzard]

Depth chart switch.

My personal opinion is that right now, everyone has figured out Milroe and he has hit a ceiling on what he can do. It's just too obvious that after the second half of the UGA game we've had three straight games where three average SEC teams have eaten him up. I don't think he is capable of doing a lot of the things required in a CKD offense so that is why I'm not getting upset with CKD for WHAT we're doing on offense. It is very hard to call plays in a game that you already know the guy you're asking to do it, can't.

But I think we're inching closer to a QB change for sure. Outside of obvious improvement this week, the outside pressure to make a change is going to be overwhelming.

 

[CoolBreeze]

I think Coach is going to feel more heat this week than he ever has in his life. He is either going to make the adjustment or ultimately fail. Our coaching transition this year is that from 17 years of discipline, hard nosed football to a more laxed approach which has worked for DeBoer for 19 years. Reading the tea leaves, I think he does what is required to get this group on track but he himself must make a transition of sorts for a long term tenure at the Capstone.