The Alabama Crimson Tide suffered a brutal week one defeat against the Florida State Seminoles, getting pushed around the field by a team that won two games last year and displaying that some issues from Kalen DeBoer’s first season in 2024 may still be present in 2025.

It’s a long season and in today’s day and age of college football with an expanded playoff, now more than ever one loss does not derail a season. But after four embarrassing defeats last year and now a fourth unranked loss in just 14 games for DeBoer, fans are understandably not happy at all.

Against what is as always a brutal schedule for Alabama, DeBoer needs to turn this thing around quickly. If he does not, the consequences could be dire.

Any defeats from the first year were ultimately able to be chalked up as first year growing pains and what fans hoped would be a distant memory this year. Instead, the season started the worst possible way, and there is real talk now about the hot seat after just 14 games.

One of college football’s most prominent insiders in Andy Staples of On3 painted a gloomy picture for DeBoer if things don’t get fixed:

“That loss looked like three of last year’s losses,” Staples said. “If you have 3 more losses like that this year, he’s going to be fired. I don’t care how big the buyout is. It’s Alabama. You can’t go 8-4.”

The buyout Staples is referring to would come at a staggering $70 million and would be one of the largest in the history of college football. Things are not quite at that point, but if DeBoer’s teams continue to play the way they did in the losses last year and this past Saturday, there is going to be a lot of noise demanding his exit.