It has been almost a week since Kalen DeBoer was named the next Alabama football head coach, and the Crimson Tide continue to lose players to the transfer portal.
DeBoer jumped on “The Paul Finebaum Show” Friday afternoon and addressed the mass exodus of Alabama players transferring with no panic.
"I'm really not alarmed at all," DeBoer said, adding, "It’s just the world we live in right now. When you have change and transition, there’s going to be change with everything that’s around the program. A lot of these programs are going through changes without transitions of head coaches."
DeBoer has slowed the bleeding down but has yet to stop it. On Friday morning, Alabama had their 27th player enter the transfer portal when their prized five-star quarterback Julian Sayin tossed his name into the portal. Sayin is the 10th player to enter the portal since Nick Saban’s retirement.
"Naturally, you expect that this is going to happen to some extent," DeBoer continued. "We’ll get the right people in the program, whether it’s staff, whether it’s players. This place has the best facilities and the best resources in the entire country. We’re able to support the great players that come here with all of that."
Some good news for DeBoer and the Crimson Tide is signing of Washington transfer quarterback Austin Mack from the portal on Thursday. Alabama will also have a chance to make more portal additions from Washington and other schools that have made coaching changes over the past 30 days.
One reason for Alabama fans to have faith is that DeBoer has experience with dealing with this kind of transition. Over the past four seasons he has dealt with transition twice, once at Fresno State from 2020-2021 and most recently at Washington from 2022-2023.
"I was just through this two years ago," DeBoer said. "This is a much better situation than that one was, with the number of players leaving. You just stay the course. You roll up your sleeves. There’s a great group of leaders here that want to uphold the standard of Alabama football. They are sticking together.”
"We want guys that want to be here. They’re working through all the noise that’s out there and I couldn’t be more proud of them sticking together and being intentional on communication with themselves, keeping it tight, keeping it together,” he added.
Players like Jalen Milroe, Tyler Booker, Kendrick Law, Jaeden Roberts, Malachi Moore and Deontae Lawson have decided that they want to come back to create a legacy and take care of unfinished business.
"A lot of these guys, they came here to leave a legacy — to build on a legacy, but to also leave a legacy," DeBoer added. "They look at it as, their job’s not done. There’s unfinished business. We’re really looking forward to locking arms, as a team, as a staff, and continue to work with the guys that are here.”
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