Happy Thursday, everyone. Or, as happy as it can be, anyhow.
As you’ve already heard, Tim Keenan’s primary backup is done for the season after a knee injury suffered in practice.
Beaman started last week’s season opener at Florida State and logged a quarterback hurry. He was starting in place of fourth-year junior Tim Keenan, who remains sidelined with a lower-body injury.
“Tim Keenan will not be available this week, but he’s doing really well and making the progress that we would expect,” DeBoer said.
“This is not a long-term injury for him.”
Without Beaman and Keenan, the Crimson Tide will turn to sophomore Edric Hill and freshmen Isaia Faga and London Simmons to increase their workload against Louisiana-Monroe on Saturday.
Who will step up and stuff the run? Anyone?
Kalen DeBoer spoke about the mood of the team on last night’s radio show.
“We all are pissed off about what happened on Saturday,” DeBoer said. “We are. Just flat-out, that’s what it is. Starting with me, and to our staff, and to our team. There’s only one thing you can do is learn from it, and you have to respond. These guys have responded and done it in a great way. It’s one that I would have expected and I’m proud of them.”
DeBoer said the team is full of “high-character” and “competitive players,” and explained how the pillars of his program are being emphasized this week.
That sounds good, but at this point all observers want to see it on a football field.
That includes some very important boosters.
Speaking to On3 Sports reporters Chris Low and Andy Staples, an unnamed “major donor” to the Alabama football program – someone who allegedly donates so much money that they have special recognition by the school – has said that while they may be spoiled by success, they are not at all pleased with what they’ve seen on the field. The donor complained that the team has looked “uninspired” and are prone to losing games where they have no business doing so.
“We’re spoiled, always have been. But when we put a team out there that looks uninspired like we have far too many times these past two years and lose to teams that we’re clearly more talented than, that’s when it becomes a problem… and not just a bunch of spoiled fans griping.”
The wealthy donors have to be behind a football coach if he is to be successful. DeBoer seemed to understand that when asked about the comment.
DeBoer reassured boosters who expressed their discontent with Alabama‘s performance.
“My message is that our team is, I think we’ve got a good football team that can do big things still this year,” DeBoer said. “We’ve got to prove it. We’ve got to go do it. To this point, it’s been just me being able to focus on football, and I appreciate that.”
Not sure anyone understood what he meant by that last sentence, but at least he acknowledged that words are meaningless at this stage.
We’ll see what it looks like on Saturday, and then going forward from there.
Barry Alvarez saw Thomas Castellanos call his shot against the Tide, and decided he’d join the party.
This Alabama team doesn’t have rat poison to worry about. Media, opponents, and even their own fans believe that this team sucks by Alabama standards. Only they can change that perception. We’re about to find out what kind of heart this squad has.
Michael Casagrande wrote about one way that DeBoer could quiet some critics.
Outside of beating Tennessee and Auburn, adding to the Bulldog misery against the Crimson Tide is the quickest way to melt even the angriest Alabama heart. It would put a Band-Aid on the wound that is DeBoer’s road record (2-4) and serve notice that this program isn’t backpedaling like Homer Simpson into the bush.
Playing as a double-digit favorite apparently isn’t a strength but FanDuel currently has Alabama as a 6.5-point underdog playing under the lights in Athens.
The Bulldogs will also have a 33-game home winning streak by the time Alabama arrives, so snapping that run dating back to 2019 could sway donors, named or otherwise.
And for the sake of symmetry, the night of Sept. 27 is the 17th anniversary of Nick Saban’s first Alabama trip to Sanford Stadium and that Black Out game became a catapult in Year 2 of his tenure.
Last, Will Leitch over at The Athletic wrote about the DeBoer situation as an example for why he would not want to be a major college football coach.
Once we’ve got our teeth in you, you’re unlikely to make it out alive. It is as part of college football as the coin toss.
At a certain level, coaches understand this, not least of all DeBoer, who, in replacing Nick Saban, surely knew there wouldn’t be much of a grace period in Tuscaloosa. And coaching is a calling for many of these men, the single driving ambition of their lives. They can’t imagine doing anything else.
But honestly, having every single person in your professional and personal life drooling with anticipation of you getting pink-slipped, right out there in the public square, seems like a terrible profession to spend the precious few days we have on this earth doing. This is a lousy way to make a living.
For the money these guys make, I’d be happy to have people bitch at me online until I’m fired.
That’s about it for now. Have a great day.
Roll Tide.
