The Alabama Crimson Tide ended their 2024 season in ugly fashion, falling 19-13 to the Michigan Wolverines in the ReliaQuest Bowl on Tuesday afternoon at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa.
Alabama finished 9-4, marking its first season with four losses since 2007. Michigan finished 8-5 and closed the year on a positive note with wins over both the Crimson Tide and Ohio State.
Here’s what Kalen DeBoer had to say after Alabama’s loss to the Wolverines.
Kalen DeBoer opening remarks after Alabama lost to Michigan
“Just congrats to Michigan here. Obviously, we dug ourselves in a hole in the first quarter. The turnovers gave them great field position. I thought our guys did did a good job on both of those drives holding them to field goals. They gave us a chance. I love the fight in our team at the end of the first half to gain some momentum. Just got to finish some drives there and at the end of the fourth quarter. That’s what it comes to: make a throw, make a catch.
“Guys played their hearts out, though. Never going to question the competitiveness. Some guys out there playing through a lot, even when it comes to just the physical pain that they’re trying to grind through and trying to finish this thing off right. So, I feel for those guys. I want the guys that are obviously going to be coming back here to remember this feeling and remember some of the feelings throughout the year, but we’ve got to keep building, continue to move forward.”
Kalen DeBoer explains fourth-down decision in final quarter
DeBoer opted to go for it on fourth-and-7 at the Michigan 34-yard line early in the fourth quarter with Alabama trailing 16-10 instead of trying a long field goal from Graham Nicholson that could have made it a one-score game. Here’s what DeBoer said of the decision.
“Yeah, you think about it. Felt like at the time — and obviously now we know he can kick the one at the end from that distance (51 yards) — I just felt like we were on the fringe of what the percentages were. Understanding who we are, and again, it sounds like you don’t have confidence in your kicker, which I do. But I just felt like we could convert a fourth-and-7. … And unfortunately we didn’t. Felt like the passing game, when we were executing — that’s the big part of it, right? — that we could find a way to convert and get the ball in the right guys’ hands and go make a play.”
DeBoer explains decision to stick with Jalen Milroe at QB after brutal first quarter
Milroe had three turnovers, one off an interception and two fumbles in Alabama’s first four drives against Michigan.
“Well, I think there are some elements. I know that even the pick, that’s a really nice play. You throw it maybe two inches out further and it’s a catch for us and I’m not sure if we run out of bounds there or what, but they made a nice play. You guys were there. You saw the elements on the snap. You’ve got to field it, you can’t turn it over. Fortunately for them, (Michigan) had the field position to where they didn’t have to really press until the rain moved through, but that certainly didn’t help us.
“We kind of dug ourselves a rut and had to play a kind of different style again. But hats off to our guys there at the end of the first half just understanding, ‘Hey, just get one score’ and then one score led to two. I wish we could have done something there I think in the end of the third quarter, beginning of the fourth quarter where we get maybe a field goal, get some points on the board, put the ball in the end-zone.”
Kalen DeBoer’s answer when asked if he’d considered a change at quarterback
“No, I didn’t. I just felt like there’s things that we still did. We scored a field goal with (Milroe) using his legs. We went 95-plus yards in less than a minute, and so just that factor and what we needed with him and his mobility added to the run game. I felt that was ‘the swap’ right there. The interception early, and a lot of those situations happened in downs and distances early that weren’t favorable, or backs to the wall and we had to throw the ball at the end of the first half, end of the second half. So I know that gets away from you with the completion percentage, but I thought there were still a lot of good plays that he made, too. I saw a fighter, the fight in his eyes, and as long as I see that, I want to hang in there with the guys this program means a lot to.”
DeBoer when asked about Alabama not trying to run the ball more vs. Michigan
“I think that they were one of the top five rushing defenses, and I know that there was personnel on both sides that were different maybe from what you would see in the regular season. Both us and them. But I think there was certainly part of our game plan where we felt we needed to spit the ball out and get the ball in the right guys’ hands. We were trying to do that. Whether it was slipping or incomplete passes, some of those plays didn’t get executed the way that you practice them for the last two or three weeks.
“There were some runs where Jam (Miller) at the end of the game shored up in there. At the end of the first half, I thought he did a really nice job getting us from behind our end-zone there. He ran hard and I think just having a little bit of balance was importance for us in this game just because of who (Michigan) were and a little bit of what we felt we could do to attack them.”
Kalen DeBoer when asked if he felt Alabama’s 2024 season was ‘successful’
“I mean, every time you’re in the locker room and you have something like this, it’s disappointing. But I think there’s a lot of things that you take from it. I know that the guys that hung in there that probably played their last game in the Crimson and White, they wouldn’t have had it any other way as far as to show the grit, show the determinations, show the competitiveness. They stayed the course. There’s a whole lot more that I just think goes into the last 12 months. People see what happens on a Saturday, but it’s guys choosing to stay here; guys choosing to go from one week to the next when you’re on a little bit of a roller coaster through the middle of the season.
“As long as we learn from it, then to me it can be a success moving forward. We’re going to take all these things that happened — and there are some things that happened in the game today, too — that we’ve got to learn from and make sure that those mistakes don’t hurt us a year from now. I don’t care if it’s turnovers, penalties. It’s everything. So to me, it’s a success if we move forward and we take advantage of the lessons, even though we don’t want to learn those lessons sometimes because they’re hard. We’re going to learn from those lessons and move forward and be better next year because of it.
“I told the guys that played their last game how much I appreciate them. I know the teammates shared how much they appreciate them, as well, in the locker room. I know they’re going to make us proud when they move on to the next level, and I promised to them that we’re going to continue to make them proud with the fight and the standard of competitiveness that they instilled in this program here moving forward.”
Watch the rest of DeBoer’s postgame press conference here: