After the Tennessee loss in Knoxville, Alabama football coach Kalen DeBoer spoke of discomfort.
The discomfort followed the Crimson Tide back to Tuscaloosa, discomfort DeBoer made clear wasn’t going to be put on players, but that defined the nature of each Crimson Tide game moving forward. It’s an urgency level, one Alabama felt after its home loss to Oklahoma in 2025 or road loss to the Sooners in 2024.
The reality remains, DeBoer said. Everything remains attainable despite back-to-back losses against highly-ranked SEC foes. But the margin for error has diminished greatly.
“You got to keep it really simple and you gotta hone in on what you can control,” DeBoer said. “And that's about improvement today. And then it's about improvement tomorrow.”
The stakes are different. It’s different for DeBoer, who had two sets of back-to-back losses in his head coaching career before now: to Nevada and New Mexico with Fresno State in 2020 and to UCLA and Arizona State with Washington in 2022.
But in the history of Alabama football, these back-to-back losses to Georgia and Tennessee put him in line with most other former Crimson Tide coaches.
How has Alabama football responded to losing streaks
Every Alabama coach, dating to J.W.H. Pollard from 1906-09, has lost two straight games at least once leading the Crimson Tide.
That includes Bear Bryant, who took back-to-back losses to Southern Mississippi and Auburn in 1982, and had it happen twice in the 1969 campaign: at Vanderbilt and against Tennessee, and to end the season vs. Auburn and Colorado.
That includes Nick Saban, who had back-to-back losses to Auburn and Oklahoma to end 2013, seven years after the Crimson Tide 2007 season which included back-to-back losses to Georgia and Florida State, and a four-game skid to end it vs. LSU, Mississippi State, Louisiana-Monroe and Auburn.
History says back-to-back losses happen at Alabama football. What separates coaches is how the Crimson Tide responds in that third game.
No Alabama coach responded better than Ray Perkins.
Perkins led Alabama to 32 wins in 48 games between 1983-86. In his Crimson Tide career, Perkins faced five different stretches where Alabama lost two games in a row. Alabama never extended its losing streak to three games. Each of those third games ended in wins by an average of more than 17 points.
Frank Thomas never saw a three-game losing streak at Alabama either, following scoreless losses to Tulane and Georgia Tech with a 39-0 road beatdown of Vanderbilt in 1939, and ending a skid of road losses to Georgia and LSU with a 12-7 road win against the Commodores in 1946.
Saban saw a two-game losing streak turn into four in 2007. Bryant’s two-game skid in 1982 extended to three with a 1-point loss to Auburn.
DeBoer isn’t alone. That doesn’t mean Alabama is any more comfortable. Nor does it mean the Crimson Tide’s reality has changed.
The standard of Alabama has not changed, a standard DeBoer now represents.
“Frustration or any type of hurt or anything like that, that's a good sign because it means that the investment's in there,” DeBoer said. “And I expect that from our guys, and they expect that from each other.”
Colin Gay covers Alabama football for The Tuscaloosa News, part of the USA TODAY Network. Reach him at cgay@gannett.com or follow him @_ColinGay on X, formerly known as Twitter or Instagram @colingaytnews.
This article originally appeared on The Tuscaloosa News: When it comes to back-to-back Alabama football losses, Kalen DeBoer isn't alone