Alabama football’s 2024 season fell short of the Crimson Tide’s typical expectations. UA finished 9-4, with losses to Vanderbilt, Tennessee, Oklahoma and Michigan, the first year the Tide failed to win 10 games since Nick Saban’s first season.
With Kalen DeBoer entering his second season as head coach, former Crimson Tide safety and captain Malachi Moore said he felt the program is moving in the right direction.
“We knew that going into last year, I can say it now, but we knew it was gonna be hard to win a national championship, first year after a coaching change,” Moore said Thursday at the NFL Combine in Indianapolis. “Especially after coach Saban’s been there for 17 years.
“So everything was kind of new to everybody and we had to go through growing pains and go through learning curves, but now that coach DeBoer has a season under his belt and he’s got the right staff around him, and he’s being able to recruit his players and things of that nature, I feel like Alabama’s gonna be in a great position going forward with coach DeBoer.”
Alabama nearly made the College Football Playoff but wound up as the first team out of the new 12-team field. The Tide went to the ReliaQuest Bowl, where it fell to Michigan.
DeBoer has carried on, signing the nation’s No. 3 2025 recruiting class according to the 247Sports composite. Moore reiterated his excitement for Alabama’s future under DeBoer, saying his two head coaches aren’t as different as they might seem from the outside.
“He’s just as competitive and motivated to win and hates to lose like coach Saban,” Moore said of DeBoer “He just has a different way of going about it, but they’re both like-minded in that aspect. And I’ve got tremendous respect for coach DeBoer for even taking a job at the University of Alabama.
“I told him that the first time we ever met. Because a lot of people don’t want to come in after the greatest football coach of all time. They don’t want to come in and fill those shoes, and it’s a hard and difficult task, but for him to be man enough to step up and take that challenge, it says a lot about him.”
