Under Nick Saban, the Alabama Crimson Tide was a powerhouse program. And now, despite Ty Simpson’s flourish last year and an opening Week 1 38-point-margin victory, Fox analyst Joel Klatt believes one particular area of DeBoer’s squad is completely nonexistent.
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“I don’t think Kalen is going to be a dominant run team,” Klatt said during the Next Round Live podcast on September 10. “I don’t know if that’s in their DNA.”
In the last two years since DeBoer took over, Alabama finished each season with four losses. This would have been a rare sight under Nick Saban.
“I was just with Indiana last week, and we were reminiscing about last year,” Klatt continued on the podcast. “Bryant Haines, their defensive coordinator, and I had a long discussion. He was like, for the life of me, I don’t understand why they didn’t try to run it at us more. Running the football is an investment. It’s a long-term investment. The ROI is not going to show up until later, and that’s why I think guys that throw the ball will have a hard time with it.”
HC DeBoer is entering his third season with Alabama. . Even though they dominated in a 48–10 victory over the East Carolina Pirates, the total rushing yards they recorded weren’t ideal.
They racked up a total of 227 rushing yards on 49 team attempts. While the numbers might look good on paper for the first game. Doing it on 49 attempts means Alabama averaged just 4.63 yards per carry against an unranked program.
It is not just a dig made towards the HC DeBoer by Klatt. It was backed by what happened last year in the Rose Bowl.
Alabama had an embarrassing 38–3 loss to Indiana in the Rose Bowl. Their inability to run the football even made Indiana’s defensive coach Bryant Haines scratch his head. Kalen DeBoer’s offense became entirely one-dimensional, and they abandoned the running game against the Hoosiers’ defense.
This was already a record in itself. Under Nick Saban, the biggest margin of loss they ever recorded was nowhere near this. The 28-point defeat to Clemson in 2019 (44-16) was the number to beat, and it was beaten in DeBoer’s second season.
In that Rose Bowl game, Haines’ defense completely locked down the line of scrimmage. At the end of the night, Alabama held on to only 23 total rushing yards. They even knocked out starting quarterback Ty Simpson with a cracked rib in the second quarter and held the Tide to just 193 yards of total offense.
Another incident with a lot of similarities was during the SEC Championship Game between Georgia and Alabama. The Georgia Bulldogs defeated the Alabama Crimson Tide 28–7. Georgia’s ferocious defense completely shut down Kalen DeBoer’s offense.
They held Alabama to a historic low of -3 total rushing yards on 16 attempts. Alabama’s lone score didn’t come until the fourth quarter on a 23-yard pass from Ty Simpson to Germie Bernard.
During the Nick Saban era, Alabama’s run team was ferocious. They were built on wearing the opponents down. Saban would stubbornly run the ball up the middle for 2 or 3 yards at a time.
During Saban’s era, he produced two Heisman Trophy-winning running backs. Mark Ingram was the cornerstone of Saban’s first national championship team at Alabama. He rushed for a crazy 1,658 yards and 17 touchdowns in 2009.
Then came the legendary Derrick Henry, another Heisman winner. He carried the ball 395 times for 2,219 yards and recorded 28 touchdowns. While everyone used to get drained, he used to physically break down the defense in the fourth quarter.
Alabama’s early numbers may mask the bigger issue, but Klatt’s warning echoes two brutal losses that exposed the Tide’s inability to run the football.