It’s hard to miss it now — there’s a different energy pulsing through Tuscaloosa. Since that early stumble against Florida State to open the 2025 season, Kalen DeBoer’s Alabama Crimson Tide has looked like a brand-new team. The plays are crisper, the sideline is louder, and the fire coming from the head coach himself has lit a spark that’s spread across the entire roster.
What’s changed? According to team captain Deontae Lawson, it’s DeBoer himself. “If you haven’t seen that emotion from the outside, now you have,” Lawson said after the Tide’s statement win over Tennessee. “That’s the Coach DeBoer that we’re getting used to. He’s definitely evolving.”
That evolution has been impossible to ignore. The clip of DeBoer charging through the tunnel before kickoff against the Volunteers went viral, electrifying Alabama fans everywhere. The normally composed second-year head coach stormed out with visible emotion, shouting encouragements, fists pumping — a side of him that even his players admitted they hadn’t fully seen before.
And the result? A 37–20 dismantling of Tennessee that felt like vintage Alabama. The defense set the tone early with a three-and-out, the offense answered with a touchdown drive, and the team never looked back. By halftime, it was 23–7, and Bryant-Denny Stadium was rocking.
For fans, this is the version of DeBoer they’ve been craving. After nearly two decades of watching Nick Saban’s fiery sideline presence, DeBoer’s calm and collected approach last year felt almost foreign. Many mistook it for indifference. But the truth, as Lawson points out, is that the fire was always there — it just took the right moment, and maybe the right loss, to bring it out into the open.
Now, DeBoer looks like a man completely in command — part strategist, part motivator, and fully locked in on restoring Alabama’s championship standard. Whether this passionate version of the coach is a temporary phase or a permanent evolution, one thing is clear: the players are responding, and the fans are all in.
“If this is the new DeBoer,” Lawson said with a grin, “we’ll get used to it real fast.”
