On Wednesday, DeBoer spoke with media members at the Reese’s Senior Bowl. He stated that players are going through winter workouts and next week the coaches will meet with players on a more in-depth level and begin installing the new schemes ahead of spring practice. The start date is unknown, but the A-Day spring game will take place on April 13, per Alabama athletics.

“From a staff standpoint, we’re really looking forward to next week,” DeBoer said. “To be around our guys, spending a lot of time with the team back on campus. (Players) that have come with us from Washington, there’s certainly an understanding of the system, what certain concepts are called and how we teach them. So hopefully back on campus, they’re picking up on those things.”

Alabama’s 30-day transfer window is technically open until Feb. 9, but departures before the spring window (April 15) are all but officially complete due to university limitations on when students can enroll and be full-time students. As things settle down for DeBoer, it allows for a moment to reassess the 2024 roster post-portal movement and provide more analysis of DeBoer’s early days on campus.

Presumably, Alabama will finish this initial transfer portal cycle with 28 portal departures, 18 predating Nick Saban’s retirement and 10 post-retirement. Of those 28 players:

• Five were listed starters on the Rose Bowl two-deep: Malik Benson, Isaiah Bond, Caleb Downs, Seth McLaughlin, Kadyn Proctor.

• Seven were listed as second-string backups: Trey Amos, Kendrick Blackshire, Terrence Ferguson II, Amari Niblack, Antonio Kite, Kristian Story, Roydell Williams.

• The remaining 16 players were not listed on the first two lines of the depth chart, including two players from the 2024 recruiting class: Julian Sayin and Jameer Grimsley.

What Alabama lost most was depth across the board. Depth is a critical component for a championship team, especially as schedule difficulty and number of games increase in a new SEC/12-team Playoff era, but any notion that the number of entries signals a “sky is falling” moment is inaccurate. Remember, Alabama had 21 entries after the 2021 season and 20 entries following the 2022 season. Roster turnover at this rate, especially at schools like Alabama, is the norm in college football today.

The total number of departures is 39 including the 11 NFL Draft entries but Alabama has 34 additions via high school signees and the transfer portal. Alabama’s scholarship count sits at 81. Here’s a breakdown of numbers by classification (including redshirted players):dhju

By comparison, the 2023 team featured 37 freshmen, 22 sophomores, 14 juniors and 14 seniors. The youth on the team is notable but not uncommon due to Alabama’s consistent roster turnover via the draft and portal over the last few seasons. The number of departures has created an opportunity for freshmen to insert themselves into key position battles and for the coaches to evaluate where the young part of the roster is at, then address needs in the transfer portal accordingly.

What the young part of the roster lacks in experience is made up in talent as Alabama’s 2023 and 2024 classes were ranked No. 1 and No. 2 according to 247Sports, respectively. One position to watch is cornerback, where Alabama lost its top four players in Kool-Aid McKinstry, Terrion Arnold, Trey Amos and Antonio Kite but added the No. 2, No. 3 and No. 4 ranked cornerbacks in the 2024 class in Jaylen Mbakwe, Zabien Brown and Zavier Mincey in addition to USC transfer Domani Jackson (all will participate in spring practice). Adding more experience at that spot will be a priority in the spring portal window, but the coaching staff might feel better about where the position is after a full spring of high-level reps for those young players.

Alabama’s 81 scholarships are four short of the 85-man NCAA limit. That’s significant because the coaching staff will be able to immediately target and pursue spring portal entries knowing there’s space on the roster. The spring portal window has been a helpful tool for Alabama in past years with players like Jameson Williams in 2021 and Jaylen Key and Amos a year ago. Those four remaining spots will be crucial in plugging the holes in positions of need, and Alabama will be a premier destination for high-level portal entries. Should Alabama fill those remaining spots, the difference in departures (39) and additions (38) will be just one player.

As it stands today, the projection is that Alabama will have four returning starters on offense (Tyler Booker, CJ Dippre, Jalen Milroe, Jaeden Roberts) and five on defense (Jihaad Campbell, Tim Keenan III, Deontae Lawson, Malachi Moore, Jaheim Oatis) plus punter James Burnip.

Thoughts on DeBoer’s staff, recruiting after a few weeks on the job
Alabama has nine full-time assistants on the 2024 staff. University of Alabama athletics hasn’t officially announced them yet but they are as follows:

Ryan Grubb — offensive coordinator/quarterbacks
Robert Gillespite — running backs
JaMarcus Shephard — wide receivers
Nick Sheridan — tight ends
Scott Huff — offensive line
Kane Wommack — co-defensive coordinator/linebackers
Freddie Roach — defensive line/assistant coach
Maurice Linguist — co-defensive coordinator/defensive backs
Colin Hitschler — co-defensive coordinator/defensive backs
The NCAA limit for on-field assistants is 10 so there’s one more spot available. There’s not a special teams coordinator on staff, so that feels like the logical filling but it remains unclear. DeBoer’s coaching staff strategy was deliberate — focusing on continuity on offense bringing over nearly every Washington assistant from that side of the ball and experience and collaboration on defense with two sitting FBS head coaches (Wommack and Linguist) and the decision to have three co-coordinators.

DeBoer also spoke about the decision to retain Gillespie and Roach from Alabama’s 2023 staff on Wednesday.

“First of all, you listen to what the people around the program have to say,” DeBoer said. “In regards to their relationships with the players, how strong their position groups were, who they are as people, as well as what their impact has been in recruiting, and man, these guys have been amazing.

“They’ve allowed us to hit the ground running here these last two weeks on the recruiting trail. I can see we made some really good decisions on keeping them here.”

This week specifically has been more focused on off-field hires that will help Alabama’s recruiting efforts moving forward.

On Wednesday, The Athletic confirmed the hire of TCU’s Eron Hodges to Alabama’s staff as an associate director of player personnel. Hodges served as TCU’s director of recruiting and a defensive analyst (cornerbacks) for the last two seasons with previous stops at Louisville, Purdue and Ohio State. The second reported hire this week was NC State’s Jatavis Sanders as director of recruiting strategy; Sanders was the director of recruiting at NC State and helped build the No. 28 overall class in the 2024 cycle.

These two hires are significant not only within high school recruiting but in the transfer portal as well. Hodges and Sanders were at schools that prioritized portal recruiting and with them did so at a high level — NC State (10th) and TCU (13th) have two of the highest-rated portal classes in the 2024 cycle. The upcoming spring portal window is perhaps the most critical one for Alabama since its inception; those two experienced pieces alongside general manager Courtney Morgan suggest Alabama will be positioned for success when the portal opens on April 15.