Kalen DeBoer still has a long way to go in being able to prove himself as a worthy HC of the Crimson Tide. He’s just found some stable ground after a Week 3 victory against Wisconsin. The Alabama HC is still nowhere close to replicating the success of his great predecessors. However, there is one area where he has surpassed them. He’s now had enough time to remedy this glaring issue. But for the 17th straight time at Tuscaloosa, DeBoer struggled to let go of this problem.

Kalen DeBoer has coached 17 games for the Tide. And in these 17 games, not once has it produced a penalty total less than that of the opponent, Tuscaloosa News reported. Alabama under DeBoer now has a whopping total of 115 penalties for 1,080 yards. Win or lose, the HC has always proven to be heavier when it comes to this side of the game. He began with 8 against FSU, brought it down to 5 against Louisiana-Monroe, and went up to 7 against Wisconsin.

It’s not that Alabama never had a problem with penalties. The stat that matters here is that under Kalen DeBoer, Alabama has always tallied more penalties than the opponent. When they played Tennessee last year, the Tide was flagged 15 times. At that time, they had the 7 highest total of penalties in the FBS. “You can’t win a football game when you have mistakes like we had out there and all the penalties,” he said after that game. A year later, that trend is exactly in the same place where it was. The last time DeBoer saw his team hauling in fewer penalties than opponents was in 2024, when Washington beat Texas in the semifinal.

Because the total has already crossed 10, Alabama is ranked as the 77-worst team in penalties in the FBS (as of September 11). Before the Wisconsin game, Alabama was ranked 96-worst in penalty yards per game. Now, it should stand approximately at 60.7 penalty yards, and we doubt if Alabama’s rankings have improved much. DeBoer’s has taken note of the problem. But the players are yet to pay heed to those observations.

Kalen DeBoer assures work is being done, but the team disproves him yet again

“As far as how it’s gone into the games, we’ve [come] back. I thought we had some aggressive penalties, some unfortunate situations, I thought, in the game… [Our] guys, believe me, they don’t want to have penalties. It’s just going to be a matter of time where they get comfortable out there and we can continue to show that it matters to us,” DeBoer said after the Louisiana-Monroe game. But this is not a new problem. And even after a whole year at the helm, and three games into his second, the graph refuses to dip.

There’s been a difference in the way the Alabama players are conducting themselves. In the ULM game, Dre Kirkpatrick Jr. managed to get himself into a targeting call. Germie Bernard, a star receiver for Alabama, was flagged for pass interference. Wisconsin, before the Alabama clash, had only 5 penalties across its 2 games. It got so bad for a Kalen DeBoer-led Alabama here that despite the Badgers hauling in a startling 6 penalties that knocks them down the chart, the Tide still edged past with 7.

DeBoer has to keep his boys in check. He’s already got a lot of bad rap to deal with, and these stats immensely burden his shoulders. Going penalty-free isn’t inevitable. But Alabama is hurtling towards the danger zone when it comes to penalties. When will Kalen DeBoer be able to put a stop to this dangerous trend?