AJ McCarron thinks Bama sucks because of recruiting

[pskjace]

19 hours ago, CHorn427 said:

Also, DeBoer left a team that made the natty to take over for a guy that just made the semis and won 6 titles for the program. I think not losing to OU or Vanderbilt was an ok expectation to have of him. 

The talent that DeBoer has called into was absolutely elite and a top 3 roster in the sport. The situations that he walked into and others like Sark walked into are very different. You can’t go 5-5 in your last 10 and losses to more unranked teams in the last 12 months than the program had in the last 15 years with that roster.  If he goes 8-4 this year Bama will fire him. 

[pskjace]

Just now, pskjace said:

The talent that DeBoer has walked into was absolutely elite and a top 3 roster in the sport. The situations that he walked into and others like Sark walked into are very different. You can’t go 5-5 in your last 10 and losses to more unranked teams in the last 12 months than the program had in the last 15 years with that roster.  If he goes 8-4 this year Bama will fire him. 

 

[Glass Joe]

There are some interesting cross currents impacting Bama / DeBoer and navigating them will be difficult for Bama fans to digest.

In the bigger picture, NIL is changing the college football landscape and hierarchy.  More than anything, it’s changing the motivations and decision-making of the players themselves.  Gone are the days of Saban being able to stack a 3-deep roster of elite talent based on the hope of winning championships and being developed over time for the NFL.  

Why?  Because money is now a consideration for those players, which causes the players (and their advisors) to think to themselves “gee, I can now get paid a million dollars to play at another school, get on the field earlier, and still get to the ultimate goal of reaching the NFL”.  Bama / Saban can no longer uniquely sell “come to Bama to get developed over time, win championships, and you’ll get to the NFL”.  Instead, other schools can now sell “come to my school, get to the field immediately, make a million dollars in college, and still be in the NFL after 3 years”.  It’s a different world now with NIL (and Portal).  There’s a reason Saban quit abruptly when he did.  He saw this coming.

Shifting gears, more specific to DeBoer and 2025 Bama, there is certainly a cultural issue that DeBoer has to deal with that Saban never had to.  As background, all the elite talent at Bama started to quickly hit the Portal in the immediate aftermath of Saban retiring (Julian Sayin, Caleb Downs, etc).  The talent flight got so dicey for Bama, that their boosters had to step in and pay lots of money to stop the players from hitting the Portal.  Then, DeBoer gets hired.  
 
So, culturally, you have a situation where the remaining talent originally chose Bama to play for Saban, but then chose booster money to remain at Bama once Saban retired.  None of these players chose to play for DeBoer.  And it showed last year.  Milroe in particular was said to be resistant to DeBoer, and even chose not to show-up to practice occasionally…and he’s your supposed team leader!  This offseason, it has been reported / opined that DeBoer cleaned out some of the malignant players and now the “culture is his”.  But, many of the remaining talent is still there due to booster NIL paychecks post-Saban (not necessarily due to DeBoer being the coach, per se).  

This is going to be a difficult cultural landscape for DeBoer to navigate.  His upperclassman never really chose to play for DeBoer as much as they chose Saban and then NIL to be at Bama.  Additionally, Bama fans are not going to just accept that NIL and the Portal have forever changed what their expectations of Bama football should be going forward.  It’s not that Bama can’t win championships any longer, it’s that Bama can’t dominate all other peer schools as they did for a decade and a half under Saban (or even under BeaR Bryant decades earlier).

While Bama still has a top 5 talented roster in 2025, they need to adapt their mentality toward an NFL mindset.  The KC Chiefs will likely lose 3-5 games each season and yet still be in the Super Bowl.  Bama may lose 2-4 games each season, and yet still make the future expanded CFP Playoffs.  You don’t have to win every Saturday, and it’s now okay to lose a few games.  Adapt or die.

My advice:  allow DeBoer some time to let his Bama program adapt to the changing currents of college football generally, and to implement / own his culture at Bama specifically.  The last thing Bama needs to do is fire DeBoer, burn $60m in buyout dollars, and then rinse-and-repeat the cycle of paying players to remain when the hire the next up and coming HC.