One can’t let it be said that Kalen DeBoer doesn’t address problems.
After the 2024 season, many Alabama fans felt that two of the biggest concerns were an undisciplined team that committed a lot of penalties, and a team that struggled in opposing stadiums.
Advertisement
Through 2025, the Tide decreased their penalties by 38%, down from 7.3 per game to only 4.5 per game. In fact, they were 15th in the country after ranking 113th the year before.
Alabama also made a lot of progress in the “Opposing Stadium” arena, beating Georgia, Missouri, South Carolina, Auburn, and Oklahoma all on the road. The season still wasn’t perfect, of course, but it was still a major improvement over the year before.
DeBoer very clearly sees the issues that Alabama has and is trying to address them (whether it works, and other things don’t pop up will remain to be seen).
So, going into 2026, everyone pretty universally agrees that Alabama’s biggest issue was the run game. 3.35 yards per attempt for the season is absurdly brutal. The Alabama running backs only had 11 total carries the ENTIRE season that went for more than 15 yards.
Advertisement
Two years ago, Jase Mclellan had 14 such runs by himself, with Roydell Williams, Justice Haynes, and Jam Miller adding 13 – and at the time we all considered that 2023 squad to be Alabama’s weakest rushing attack since 2007. It wasn’t an “inconsistent” running game. It was entire half of the offense that was totally dead in the water.
Well, shortly after the season ended, offensive line Chris Kapilovic was fired, and DeBoer went and hired Adrian Klemm.
Klemm comes with a strong track record of success at the college level at has had some successful seasons with the Pittsburgh Steelers.
On top of changing the offensive line coach, the Tide is also pretty well overhauling the entire position group. Michael Carroll is the only returning starter and 11 total players from that position group have left the program.
Advertisement
Meanwhile, they’ve added four new freshmen, a JUCO transfer, and 6 transfers from the portal. Whether or not they’ll hit and be good remains to be seen, but DeBoer is absolutely making the attempt to make changes where they were needed.
The second part of this is the tight ends. Bryan Ellis was hired as the team’s TE coach despite having always been a QB coach, passing game coordinator, and OC in his previous stints at Georgia Southern, Western Kentucky, and USC. He’s now moved to QB coach to take Nick Sheridan’s spot, and DeBoer has hired Richard Owens away from Louisville to coach the tight ends.
Owens was a tight end at Louisville back in 1999-2003 before playing for four years in the NFL. He then started his coaching career in 2010, focusing on tight ends and getting his start under Bobby Petrino at Arkansas. Over the last decade, he’s alternated between OL coach and TE coach at UAB, South Alabama, and Louisville (interestingly, serving in both roles in two different stints for both UAB and Lousiville). He was also the OL coach and run game coordinator for Georgia Southern for a year.
In 2025, while he was the OL coach for the Cardinals, their top two running backs averaged 8 yards per carry on 197 combined carries, and the Cards have averaged well over 6 yards per carry the two prior seasons with Owens’ lines blocking.
Advertisement
Essentially, he brings experience as an NFL TE, experience in the southeast, experience as a TE coach, and excellent rushing game results as an OL coach.
On top of that, the Tide also added TE Josh Ford in the transfer portal, who just so happens to be a 6’6” 265 run-blocking specialist.
Kalen DeBoer is putting a pretty massive amount of resources into fixing the run blocking, and it’s highly encouraging to see him acting so swiftly and completely on it.
Oh, and the Tide also just signed the #1 running back in the country out of high school in EJ Crowell.
We’ve got a long 7 months to go before we can see the fruits, but there’s a lot of room for hope.
Roll Tide!
