Alabama’s 2025 season ended in a way nobody in Tuscaloosa could’ve imagined. The Crimson Tide got absolutely demolished 38-3 by Indiana in the Rose Bowl. It was a humiliating end to what had been a rollercoaster year under second-year head coach Kalen DeBoer. Mark Ingram, the former Heisman Trophy winner and one of the most passionate Tide voices out there, found himself in the awkward position of having to address the elephant in the room. 

“Obviously, there’s nothing good to say about what transpired in the Indiana game, man,” Ingram said on the Triple Option podcast. “It’s just not used to us seeing Alabama get dominated in this fashion, where you can do nothing about it. I’m like the Rocky movie, I’m like, ‘throw the damn towel.’ But man, I’m proud of the direction the program is going. 

“Last year, we didn’t make it to the playoffs. Last year, we didn’t make it to the SEC championship game. So, this year, we made it to the SEC championship game as the one seed. We win the playoff game. Coach DeBoer is a good coach. We have a lot of talent. I think it’s time to go back to the drawing board and figure out how we take the next step.” 

The 2025 season for Alabama was a tale of two teams. On one hand, the Crimson Tide went 10-3 in the regular season. They earned the No. 1 seed in the SEC Championship game and made it to the College Football Playoff for the first time under Kalen DeBoer. On the other hand, they got throttled in the games that mattered most. They lost 28-7 to Georgia in the SEC Championship and then suffered that soul-crushing 38-3 beatdown to Indiana in the Rose Bowl quarterfinal. 

Indiana ran for 215 yards, while Alabama could only muster 193 total yards. And it was never competitive after the first quarter. The Hoosiers took a 17-0 halftime lead and never looked back, exposing every weakness Kalen DeBoer’s squad had tried to mask all season long.​

But all is not bad. It was just the second season under Kalen DeBoer, and Alabama fought hard. The win against Oklahoma in the first round of the playoffs is proof of the self-belief the team displayed even in the darkest of hours. They also defeated Georgia in the regular-season matchup. All in all, Bama’s performance might not be near what fans are accustomed to, but it’s progress. Mark Ingram is right. DeBoer has to go back to the drawing board and address all the plaguing issues that marred this campaign.

Alabama’s Achilles’ heel

The biggest problem plaguing Alabama all season has been a complete and utter inability to run the football. The Tide averaged just 104.13 rushing yards per game, ranking a pitiful 125th nationally. It is an unthinkable stat for a program that once prided itself on physical, ground-and-pound football. Injuries to running back Jamarion Miller didn’t help. And the offensive line never found the right combination to generate push in the run game despite improved pass blocking. 

Making matters worse was the shocking regression of sophomore star Ryan Williams, who entered the season as a Biletnikoff Award frontrunner but ended up leading the entire FBS with 13 dropped passes. Williams went from 48 catches for 865 yards and eight touchdowns as a true freshman to just 49 catches for 689 yards and four touchdowns in 2025. His drop total more than tripled from 4 to 13. 

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By the end of the season, he’d fallen to WR4 on the depth chart behind Germie Bernard, Isaiah Horton, and freshman Brooks. When your offense becomes one-dimensional, and your most explosive weapon can’t hold onto the ball, you don’t expect to face a team like Oklahoma with one of the best defenses and live to tell the tale. But Alabama did. Unfortunately, they couldn’t replicate it against the Hoosiers.