Alabama football needed this one.
Kalen DeBoer needed it more.
In a hard-hitting, fisticuffed-filled 89th edition of the annual Iron Bowl, the Crimson Tide notched a 28-14 home victory over archrival Auburn on Saturday.
Players rejoiced − quarterback Jalen Milroe was moved to tears in the postgame locker room, per Yea Alabama’s Aaron Suttles − and rightfully so. In this series, wins warrant celebration no matter the circumstances. And circumstances in 2024 boiled down to this: Alabama is likely headed to a non-playoff bowl game after the win over Auburn, which is exactly where the Crimson Tide would’ve gone had it lost. From a postseason standpoint, this Iron Bowl didn’t come with high stakes for the team.
But it absolutely came with high stakes for DeBoer, Alabama’s first-year coach.
A loss to Auburn to finish with an 8-4 thud, when the Crimson Tide was on the cusp of a College Football Playoff berth just a week earlier, would’ve left a black smear on DeBoer’s first season that little if anything could’ve washed out. A Week 13 embarrassment at Oklahoma, 24-3, diminished CFP hopes and rendered this team without the rudder of postseason glory. Likely elimination from playoff contention is a gut punch that leaves plenty of teams out of breath the next week. Take LSU, for example: The week after Alabama knocked LSU out of playoff contention, the Tigers looked shell-shocked and were unable to rebound in a loss to Florida.
This week, DeBoer was faced with the same challenge in motivating his team.
Yes, the Iron Bowl itself is supposed to be motivation enough. But Alabama isn’t chock full of in-state players anymore. Only four of UA’s Iron Bowl starters − Tim Keenan, Qua Russaw, Jah-Marien Latham and Ryan Williams − are from Alabama. Losing championship hopes wasn’t going to simply roll off this team’s back, the way it might have 30 years ago when Alabama recruited more regionally, just because Auburn came next on the schedule. This was an acid test for DeBoer’s ability to get a team ready to play; a team that was absolutely not ready to play just a week prior in Norman, Okla.
He passed it.
“I love coach DeBoer. I love his commitment, his resiliency, him as a leader, the shoes that he’s filled with the position that he’s in,” said UA quarterback Jalen Milroe. “… Just seeing his fight during the year, it’s not easy being a head coach in the SEC. But he’s just shown tremendous leadership and shown, you know, his pride in coaching and how much he cares about it. I’m going to be quite honest, man. He’s one of the best coaches I’ve been around.”
If the sense in the entire UA locker room mirrors Milroe’s remarks, DeBoer has himself an Iron Bowl on which to build.
That Alabama came out so flat against OU, with so much at stake, remains a mystery that fans will wrestle with into the offseason. It was a loss that fell at the coaching staff’s feet as much as those of the players. Plainly enough, this was a good UA team but not a great one, capable of brilliant flashes (Georgia, LSU) and demoralizing woes (Vanderbilt, Oklahoma). To reach the CFP as a three-loss team, it needed plenty of help from other games, and only got some of that help on Saturday.
But in the Iron Bowl, Alabama had to stand up for itself and set aside what had been squandered. Forget, at least for one afternoon, what could have been.
That’s what it did. And that’s what DeBoer needed most.