Amid exits, Tide ‘have full trust’ in DeBoer vision
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Chris Low, ESPN Senior Writer
With transfer news swirling around Alabama‘s football program since Nick Saban’s retirement, several key players who’ve decided to stay told ESPN on Wednesday there was no panic within the football complex, only optimism for what comes next under new coach Kalen DeBoer.
“We’ve had some guys leave and wish them well, but that doesn’t change the standard at Alabama or our belief that Coach DeBoer is going to lead us where we want to be, winning championships,” said starting inside linebacker Deontae Lawson, who passed up the NFL draft to return for his redshirt junior season. “We know what we can accomplish and know he’s won everywhere he’s been. We’re going to keep this thing going. It’s going to be a wonderful story, and we’re ready to embrace it.”
DeBoer was named last week to replace Saban, who won six national championships in a legendary 17-year career at Alabama. The Crimson Tide have had 25 players enter the transfer portal this offseason, including safety Caleb Downs and offensive tackle Kadyn Proctor on Wednesday. Both players earned Freshman All-America honors this season. Receiver Isaiah Bond transferred to Texas on Sunday.
Junior offensive guard Tyler Booker, who has started at Alabama since his freshman season, understands that the reality of college football in the transfer portal and NIL era is that players come and go, especially when a coach of Saban’s caliber retires.
“I want to wish them well wherever they go, but just because Coach Saban is gone, that doesn’t mean the standard is gone. He taught us that standard,” Booker said. “It really comes down to, ‘Why did you come to the school?’ I came to Alabama obviously to play for Coach Saban and play to his standard, to be challenged every day and be held accountable by my teammates, the people in this building and the fans.
“No amount of money could buy me away from Alabama and my legacy here.”
Quarterback Jalen Milroe, who finished sixth in the Heisman Trophy voting in 2023, is looking forward to playing in DeBoer’s offense. Michael Penix Jr. blossomed under DeBoer and new Alabama offensive coordinator Ryan Grubb at Washington. Penix passed for 9,544 yards and 67 touchdowns over the past two seasons after transferring from Indiana.
“Coach DeBoer stands out as one of the most successful and accomplished offensive-minded college football coaches,” Milroe said. “His coaching style and approach bring good energy to the team.”
Malachi Moore, a permanent team captain and Alabama’s most versatile defensive back, said that energy was one of the things that stood out most to him when DeBoer met with a group of team leaders after the initial meeting with the entire team Friday.
“You could feel that energy, the positive energy, and also how open he was to listening to our opinions, the players’ opinions,” said Moore, a fifth-year senior. “We did our own homework as players. The dude has won everywhere. His standard is the same as ours, to be hoisting that trophy up at the end of the year. He was one win away last year, and that puts a chip on his shoulder. We definitely have one on ours with the way the season ended.
“We’re working toward the same goal, and this time with his vision.”
One of the things DeBoer told the players was “nonnegotiable” was that Alabama’s team would be a family.
“We’re going to win together,” Booker said. “The closer we are, the better we are.”
Lawson, who was second on the team last season with 67 total tackles, said even though it might “seem a little rough right now” with some of the players leaving, this transition has only strengthened the bond between the players who’ve stayed.
“We’ve embraced the change, and as a group, want to finish what we started,” Lawson said. “We’re not running from change. We’re buying in and know we’re in good hands. We have full trust in Coach DeBoer and the coaches he’s bringing in.”
Booker is originally from New Haven, Connecticut, and played at IMG Academy in Florida. He was the No. 10 prospect in the ESPN 300 recruiting rankings in 2022. He understood the microscope he would be under when he signed with Alabama and does so even more now, especially with the 2024 team being the first of the post-Saban era.
“Everybody’s going to be watching. We all know we’re going to be on the first team after Coach Saban, but that’s a chance to only cement our legacy, to go out and win a championship under Coach DeBoer,” Booker said. “Yeah, we’ve lost a few guys, some really good players, but we’ve still got a good young core. And you’ve seen what Coach DeBoer has done with his teams everywhere else. He gets the most out of his players, and he knows the kind of players it takes to win championships.”
“We’ve embraced the change, and as a group, want to finish what we started. We’re not running from change. We’re buying in and know we’re in good hands. We have full trust in Coach DeBoer and the coaches he’s bringing in.”
Alabama LB Deontae Lawson
One of the things that resonated most with the Alabama players was that DeBoer, despite building a Pac-12 championship team at Washington and the Huskies heading to the Big Ten next season, wasn’t afraid to take on a challenge as daunting as following a legend like Saban.
“He’s passionate about it. That’s why he’s here, to win championships, and we still have elite players on our roster to do it,” Lawson said. “I’m sure he will get even more elite players as we go forward, because they’re going to want to play for him.”
Booker joked that following in the footsteps of Saban wasn’t for everybody. Not only did Alabama win six national championships under Saban, but the Crimson Tide won 11 or more games in 15 of the past 16 seasons under him. They’ve won two of the past three SEC championships, both times beating No. 1 Georgia, and have been in the College Football Playoff all but two years of its existence.
“With our fans, and I love our fans, but they’re really tough,” Booker said. “Following the greatest coach of all time is a gutsy thing to do, and it was going to be for whoever they brought in. But Coach DeBoer is wired for it. I’m excited to go out there with him and see what we can do. People counted us out after the Texas game and then the South Florida game this year, and we made it all the way to the playoff. People will count us out again because we lost Coach Saban and some guys to portal.
“We know what they think of us, so let’s go out there and prove ’em wrong again.”
Moore added: “I told Coach DeBoer the night we met that it takes a man to come in here behind Coach Saban and take this job on. And then you sit there and listen to the vision he has for this program, and that says a lot about him and who he is.”
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Ryan S. Clark
Many of Mikko Rantanen’s greatest moments have come in a Colorado Avalanche sweater. It’s just that the most defining moment of his career came at their expense.
It wasn’t enough that the Dallas Stars were trailing by two goals. It was also the fact that Rantanen scored a hat trick in a string of four unanswered goals that saw his current team, the host Stars, eliminate his old team, the Avalanche, in a 4-2 win Saturday in Game 7 of the Western Conference quarterfinals at the American Airlines Center.
“Obviously, the feeling was incredible to win a series,” Rantanen said in his postgame media availability. “This series was not exactly what I expected. I expected a seven-game series, even before Game 1. The ups and downs in the series. … Belief was there with the group the whole time. Obviously, I was able to make a pay to get the first one and the crowd started to roll.”
The Stars, attempting to reach the conference finals a third straight time, will advance to the semifinal round in which they will await the winner of series featuring the St. Louis Blues and Winnipeg Jets. That encounter will be decided Sunday in Game 7 in Winnipeg.
Soon, the Stars’ collective focus will shift to another Central Division foe. But for now? The attention before, during, and after the game, was on Rantanen.
Part of what made the Avalanche-Stars series arguably the most intriguing first-round series in either conference was the fact it placed two 100-point teams that are in championship window against each other. But, it also came with several subplots with the notable being the team that traded quite a bit to land Rantanen — with the hope he could win them a Stanley Cup now — needed him to defeat the team that he won a championship with back in 2022.
With one assist through the first four games, there was a discussion about if the Stars could manage to win with a sputtering Rantanen on top of the fact they were already without two of their best players in defenseman Miro Heiskanen and forward Jason Robertson.
Rantanen responded with a three-point performance in Game 5, and a four-point performance in Game 6 only to then have a hand in each goal on Saturday. His first goal came on the power-play with 12:12 remaining in the third period when he found enough space to fire a wrist shot that beat MacKenzie Blackwood.
Then came the game-tying goal and the significance it carried. The Stars went on the power play went Avalanche forward Jack Drury was called for holding. Drury part of the trade package the Carolina Hurricanes used to get Rantanen in late January before they would trade him to the Stars.
Drury’s penalty opened the door for Rantanen to score a game-tying goal that might be one of, if not, his signature salvo. Rantanen skated into the Avalanche zone in a 1-on-3 before he split two players before going around the net for a wrap-around goal that went off the skate of Samuel Girard with 6:14 left.
Three minutes later, the Stars received another power-play opportunity that saw Rantanen along with another former Avalanche forward in Matt Duchene work together to find Wyatt Johnston for the game-winning goal.
In the final minute, the Avalanche pulled Blackwood in the attempt to grab a late goal and force over time. Instead? Stars goaltender Jake Oettinger withstood a barrage that officially ended when Stars forward Tyler Seguin got the puck out of the zone only for Rantanen to skate in on an open net for the hat trick with three seconds left.
“I couldn’t care less who scored for them, I really couldn’t,” Avalanche captain and left winger Gabriel Landeskog said when asked about what it was like to watch Rantanen score a hat trick. “Mikko is one of my best friends and I love him, but I couldn’t care if he scored or if somebody else scored.”
For eight full seasons, Rantanen was part of a homegrown movement that saw the Avalanche go from finishing with what was then the worst record in the salary cap era back in 2016-17 to become a perennial favorite to win the Stanley Cup, which did they did in 2023, while also becoming a model for the need to build through the draft.
Building through stars such as Cale Makar, Nathan MacKinnon, Landeskog and Rantanen allowed the Avalanche to become a success. As did the moves they made to get other key figures like Valeri Nichushkin and Devon Toews.
Like all teams in a championship window, the Avs were facing the prospect of possibly making a difficult decision. They had yet to agree to a new contract with Rantanen, who was a pending unrestricted free agent. Then, came the blockbuster trade that few throughout the league saw coming.
The Avalanche traded Rantanen in a three-team trade that saw them get Martin Necas and Drury along with two draft picks. Rantanen’s time with the Carolina Hurricanes was limited to just two goals and six points in 13 games.
Despite the fact the Hurricanes are also among that cadre of championship contenders, Rantanen struggled to find cohesion in Raleigh. Rather than run the risk of watching leave for nothing in free agency, the Hurricanes put out feelers to a few teams with the Stars being one of them.
A long-time admirer of Rantanen, the Stars packaged two first-round picks, three second-round picks and former prized prospect Logan Stankoven to get Rantanen. They then signed him to an eight-year contract worth $12 million annually.
“It’s two things: It’s where our team’s at, and it’s Mikko Rantanen,” Stars general manager Jim Nill told ESPN back in March.
Rantanen finished the regular season with five goals and 18 points in 20 games prior to the showdown with his former team.
Not only did Rantanen’s hat trick condemn his former team to their second first-round exit since winning the Stanley Cup, but it continued a theme of former Avalanche eliminating their previous employers.
The Avalanche and Stars faced each other in last season’s Western Conference semifinal that saw Duchene, a former Colorado first-round pick, score the game-winning goal.
A year later, it was another former Avalanche first-round pick who delivered the devastating blow.
“It seems pretty fitting,” Johnston said about Rantanen. “Obviously, we want to win for each other and I think that goes a little extra when it’s a guy like that who is such a big part of our team and was there for a long time and everyone knows the trade that went on. It’s so awesome. We’re so happy as a group for him.”
As if Rantanen scoring a hat trick in a four-goal comeback wasn’t enough, there’s also the fact that this is now the ninth consecutive Game 7 that Stars coach Peter DeBoer has won his career.
DeBoer’s nine wins in Game 7s broke a tie with Darryl Sutter for the most in NHL history. It was also DeBoer’s third game 7 wins with the Stars.
“I felt something was going to happen,” DeBoer said. “But I could not have predicted that.”
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