Monday blues came early for Kalen DeBoer’s Alabama. Having entered the Rose Bowl stadium as the underdogs, Bama had a chip on its shoulder. However, the 3-38 disaster painted a grim picture, which the locker room is determined to keep alive.

The offense never really kicked off. Adding to the woes, Ty Simpson rolled over after taking a massive hit and was eventually benched. Backup quarterback Austin Mack took over, but Alabama was far from seeing the daylight at the end.

After reaching so close to the national championship game, the sting of the Rose Bowl loss is hard to put into words. Having learned from it, DeBoer and Co. is ensuring it sparks a fire, working it up as fuel for the next season. DeBoers’ post-game conference comments made it clear.

Coach (Kalen) DeBoer, an opening statement, please.

Kalen DeBoer: “First of all, you just have to give a tip of the hat to Indiana. Everything that they did today in the game. For us, it’s a lot of emotions right now, shared in the locker room. We can be upset because losing doesn’t sit well with us, and we can be frustrated about it. That’s what our program’s going to be.

Situations happen, and we have to use them to fuel us moving forward. I’m going to be proud of what we accomplished this year. We came up short of our goal.”

Nick Hamilton from Nitecast Media: How do you take this (loss) and fuel this till next season?

Kalen DeBoer: “You want to start laying the groundwork for the future; you’ve got to go back to starting over from scratch with putting the right people, committing to a common goal, together, and the actions following it.

It may not feel like it when you’re in this moment right now, and what happened today. But I can tell you it’s a fine line between being here and being at the top. But, we got to do the work.”

Joe Goodman from AL.com: What were you thinking on that fourth-down call, and could you explain that a little bit?

Kalen DeBoer: “Just felt like it was one of those games where you have to take advantage of possessions. When you don’t get it, it’s the wrong decisions. In the worst-case scenario, you want to hold them to a field goal, but it didn’t work out that way. We tried to do the punt and hard count to give me a little more time to talk through the play call.

I was committed to going for it and wanted to make it happen. You’ve got to be careful as a head coach. We had to take advantage of every possession to end up the way we wanted to.”

Steve Futterman from NPR: I was wondering if you could take a step back and tell us what you think of this Indiana team.

Kalen DeBoer: “They’re very good. Their trigger man made all the throws and third-down conversions; they just execute at a high level, and everyone feeds off each other, on both sides of the ball.

You’ve got to tip your cap to coach Cignetti. They’re all aligned in execution, and that’s what they did today.”

Coach, could you just speak to the quarterback change? Ty’s toughness, and then how you thought Austin played?

“Ty Simpson had an injury and really wanted to go out there. He feels like he let down the team, and there’s no way that’s the case. He went out there and tried to battle.

Austin Mack, being ready to go, did some nice things out there, but was put in a tough spot. I’m proud of all our team, but that was the situation with Ty.”