BATON ROUGE, La. — Kalen DeBoer felt something was developing in the days leading up to his Alabama football team’s road trip to Baton Rouge on Saturday.
The Crimson Tide went on a roller coaster in October: loss, win, loss — with brilliant play and mind-boggling low points. The biggest test of all awaited in November — a road game against LSU, a notoriously tough place to play — coming on the heels of the Crimson Tide’s lackluster performance at Tennessee a few weeks prior. To add another layer, it was a do-or-die College Football Playoff elimination game.
Only DeBoer and the players knew what would come on Saturday night. That confidence reverberated throughout the football facility between the bye week and game prep week.
“To be honest, we were locked in like never before,” senior captain Deontae Lawson said.
Free, daily sports updates direct to your inbox.
Free, daily sports updates direct to your inbox.
Sign Up
But then the game’s first play was stopped by a false start before the opening snap, and Tiger Stadium reached an inflection point. It felt like a deja vu moment from the loss in Knoxville, but that was the most adversity Alabama faced all night en route to a 42-13 win.
“I thought we learned a lot from the Tennessee game,” DeBoer said. “I was thinking maybe otherwise after that penalty, but I still felt in my heart very comfortable that we would be in a much better situation and (Tennessee) was just a one-off.”
In the short term, the win solidifies Alabama’s place in the Playoff field and positions the Crimson Tide for a berth with three games to play in the regular season. In the big picture, Saturday’s game reinforced that DeBoer’s way is resonating. It hasn’t been a perfect season, but showing up on this big stage and showing some improvement from the last road game are positive signs.
How exactly did it all come together? Doubling down on DeBoer’s core values, plus a few recent revelations paved the way for a dominant win to stabilize the program entering the final stretch.
“I really don’t feel like we’ve ever been overconfident or complacent in any way,” DeBoer said. “We haven’t done enough here, since we’ve been here, to get to that point. So any of the things that have happened over the course of the season, I just attribute to part of our growth together. Just stay in the course, and you see, slowly, the little things coming together.
“And we got to reload it all (next week) and do it all over again.”
Alabama entered the bye week with some momentum after a 34-0 win over Missouri. It was a time for reflection about how to finish the season strong. Tyler Booker, one of the leaders of the team, took a step back to assess how he could improve his leadership entering November. What he found was that he didn’t account for one key element of the team enough.
“I kinda took for granted how many young guys we have on the team,” Booker said. “The past two years, we’ve had those older guys. Now that I’m the older guy, I have to teach the younger guys how to become the older guy. Understanding that, I just had to push a little bit with the younger guys. But whatever it takes.”
To Booker’s point, 21 of the 44 players on Alabama’s two-deep are freshmen or sophomores. That underscores the point of how many fresh faces there are on this roster compared to last season.
Roster turnover was one of the themes that defined the program through the spring and summer: 39 departures via the NFL Draft and transfer portal and 41 new additions via high school recruiting and the portal. Fourteen of Alabama’s 22 starters on offense and defense are in their first year with the program, and 30 players on the two-deep weren’t in those spots last year.
All that new has led to a challenge of blending cultures and bridging the gap between the returners and the standard that has been established and the newcomers. The main voices early on, understandably, were returning leaders like Booker, Lawson, Jalen Milroe and Malachi Moore, but as the bye week, approached DeBoer challenged the team to adopt a new mentality. The established leaders will keep leading, but it’s time for the newcomers to not think of themselves as newcomers anymore.
“We understood that we’re here now,” Booker said. “There’s no such thing as a ‘new guy’ — we’re seven, eight weeks into the season. We had a lot more guys leading, which was great to see, and I’m just excited to continue to improve with this team.”
Still, Alabama’s leadership rose to the occasion when it was needed most at LSU. The Booker-led offensive line didn’t allow a sack and paved the way for Milroe to rush for a career-high 185 yards and four touchdowns, while Lawson and Moore combined for 14 tackles as the starting defense allowed just six points two weeks after posting a shutout. It was a dominant day for the players and a demonstration of their growing trust and confidence in the coaching staff.
In a practice earlier in the week, Milroe broke off an explosive run out of a specific look: a fake give to the running back, then using him as a lead blocker. Milroe thought he ran the play well but not well enough to move on.
“Rep it again,” offensive coordinator Nick Sheridan said at the time.
Another successful run.
“Rep it again,” and so on.
The opening touchdown on Saturday, a 39-yard run by Milroe, was set up in part by a lead block by running back Jam Miller. All four of Milroe’s rushing touchdowns were set up by a running back blocking out front.
3️⃣ for 3️⃣ combo. 👊@JalenMilroe
📺: ABC pic.twitter.com/1VAe2465cI
— Alabama Football (@AlabamaFTBL) November 10, 2024
The biggest difference offensively between Saturday’s win and the loss at Tennessee was the cohesive offensive line. The coaching staff made an adjustment to give Milroe and center Parker Brailsford more confidence. Against Tennessee, Brailsford was in charge of making the calls at the line while looking through his legs for a signal from Milroe to snap the ball, and that proved to be overwhelming. Booker assumed the look-back responsibility at LSU while Brailsford handled only the calls.
Alabama had one pre-snap penalty after the false start to begin the game.
“The word of the week for us was relentless,” DeBoer said. “Relentless in what we do on the field each and every play but just relentless in our preparation. It just starts with simple things, just trying to go silent cadence and managing that. They just stayed the course, kept buckling down, kept getting better and better.”
But perhaps the biggest play of the game occurred on defense when Lawson intercepted Garrett Nussmeier inside the 5-yard line to preserve a 21-6 lead on LSU’s drive to open the second half. The play was a week in the making: Lawson intercepted scout-team quarterback Austin Mack on the same play in practice.
Snagged. 🤫@Deontae_0
📺: ABC pic.twitter.com/2jnaqM5GI4
— Alabama Football (@AlabamaFTBL) November 10, 2024
“That’s just preparation,” Lawson said. “Seeing it through the week, being confident that you’re seeing the right things and then just trusting yourself and making the play.”
With time winding down on Saturday night inside a near-empty Tiger Stadium, DeBoer felt a pair of hands grab his shoulder. It was Sheridan, who had come down from the coaches’ box early, and the two shared an embrace of excitement as Alabama played its most complete game yet. The celebratory vibes were only beginning.
A postgame party with Alabama’s players and the fans that made the trip— pic.twitter.com/Ww2630K6Cx
— Kennington Lloyd Smith III (@SkinnyKenny_) November 10, 2024
The Alabama fans were practically the only fans left when the clock ran out. “Rammer Jammer” rained down as the Alabama players rushed to celebrate with their fans, some jumping into the crowd before returning to the locker room. The celebration continued, but it was met with a necessary message to re-center the team: Regressing is not an option with three games left.
“I reiterated to the guys, ‘Why can’t we do this every week?’” Booker said. “Same guys every week, same game plan every week; why are we not capable of doing this every week? We have to go back to practice and carry that over. There’s so many things to get better at; that’s why I love this team and am ready to get back to work (on Sunday).”
With two straight wins, Alabama is trending closer to consistency, which is the ideal place to be at this time of year. The expanded Playoff allowed this team to work through its growing pains without ending its championship hopes. After Saturday’s results around college football, the pathway to the SEC Championship Game and the Playoff feels a little more realistic. It won’t happen without an undefeated November, a 4-0 stretch after a 2-2 October would be confirmation of the team’s improvement and culminate in a Playoff spot.
Where does Alabama go from here? The simple answer is back to work. This team is no stranger to a letdown after a big win (see: the loss to Vanderbilt after the win over Georgia), but Saturday’s win might have been a corner-turning moment. There’s a sense of excitement and confidence in the aftermath of a win, but there’s a strong desire to not squander the opportunity ahead.
“We have to separate our minds into being hungry and starving,” Milroe said. “We want guys that are starving in our locker room, that constantly want to get better and do what’s best for the team. The best thing about our team right now, and what we did (on Saturday) was complement each other. Everyone clicking on all cylinders is so important moving forward, complementing each other on offense, defense and special teams.”
(Top photo of Jalen Milroe: Jonathan Bachman / Getty Images)
