“We know that we need to be better. That’s the expectation I had from day one, is that we perform at a championship level, and we certainly fell short of that,” DeBoer told reporters in Mobile while attending a Senior Bowl practice. " Whether you’re 0-12 or 12-0 in a regular season, you’re always gonna really critique and be detailed on how you’ve gotta improve.”
Since the season ended with a loss to Michigan in the ReliaQuest Bowl, DeBoer has been hard at work. He’s made changes to the staff defensively, brought in new players via the transfer portal, and has been on the recruiting trail.
Later this offseason, he’ll have to choose a new starting quarterback. He also left the door open for Ryan Grubb, his offensive coordinator at Washington to return to the staff.
DeBoer expressed optimism for what was to come.
“There’s a lot of good things already happening,” he said Tuesday. “It already feels a lot different internally as we turn the page into 2025, from the first team meeting, which was less than two weeks after our last bowl game.
“Just excited about what’s happening, the work that’s being put in. I haven’t had a chance to be around the guys a lot, just because we’ve been on the road recruiting. You only get a few days here, especially as a head coach, the only time of the year now in January you can get out.”
DeBoer was asked after the bowl loss whether he felt the 2024 season was a success. He said then that Alabama needed to learn lessons from the campaign, which was plagued by inconsistency and included regular season losses to Vanderbilt, Oklahoma and Tennessee, and was the Tide’s first sub-10 win season since 2007.
As the Crimson Tide’s April 12 A-Day spring game approaches, DeBoer was looking forward to attacking the rest of the offseason.
“Really excited about the momentum we have with so many players choosing to continue their career here and build the stock that they have to get to the level that we’re talking about, going to the NFL,” DeBoer said.
