Kalen DeBoer discusses Alabama’s recruiting status a year after taking the position.
DeBoer insight Starting QB
AlabaKalen DeBoerma coach Kalen DeBoer provided some insiKalen DeBoerght into when he would be ready to name a starting quarterback for the 2025 season. Ty Simpson, Austin Mack, and Keelon Russell are all competing for the job after last year’s starter, Jalen Milroe, left for the NFL. During an appearance on ESPN’s Always College Football with Greg McElroy, DeBoer revealed that he like to have a starter named by the final week and a half of the season. The Crimson Tide begin the 2025 season oDeBoern August 30 against Florida State, putting the deadline in mid-August at the latest.
“There has been a fairly similar duration during autumn camp. “The last week and a half,” DeBoer explained. “We normally have a slightly longer period of bonus practices prior to Week 1. There is a weekend and several days before that. That’s when you really want to have the starter identified so that he can start truly gelling with his receiving corps and heaping on the reps. But if you feel like you’ve reached that point early, perhaps a week earlier.”
DeBoer insight Starting QB
DeBoer is coming off his first season as head coach at Alabama, where he led the club to a 9-4 record. As the Crimson Tide look to return to the College Football Playoff, finding the right quarterback will be critical. Simpson is starting his fourth season in Tuscaloosa after serving as the backup for the previous two years. Mack is a former four-star recruit who followed DeBoer from Washington to Alabama, while Russell is a five-star freshman who was ranked as the No. 2 quarterback in the 2025 cycle.
That should lead to a close competition and a difficult decision. However, having been a part of several of these confrontations over his career, DeBoer went on to describe what he looks for when naming a starter. “I’ve had a lot of these kind of competitions over the years,” he informed me. “When you do it for 25 years, I’m not sure if it’s three, four, or five, but there’s been a handful of competitions at some level where there’s two guys, three players, a man coming in as a transfer, and so on. You really need to be thorough.
“I believe that ultimately, it is about who can move the ball down the field. People can get caught up in who is doing well right now, who has the highest completion %, and so on. All of these are crucial. But, in the end, I believe it comes down to who consistently moves the ball down the field for the ones and twos when you’re here in practice every day.”
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