At Washington, Kalen DeBoer took charge of a disorganised environment. Jimmy Lake was fired by the Huskies in November 2021 following his mainly failed two-year tenure, which included pushing a player.
Enter DeBoer, who took over as head coach at Alabama last month to succeed Nick Saban. This is DeBoer’s first Power Five coaching position, having previously spent two years at Fresno State. Roger Rosengarten, a former offensive lineman for the University of Washington, said that DeBoer provided stability on Montlake.
Rosengarten remarked, “The first thing I noticed is just how well he commanded the room,” on Wednesday at the Senior Bowl in Mobile.
DeBoer managed the ship well. He held himself to a standard that extended beyond the players.
Rosengarten claims that DeBoer gave his assistants just as much coaching.
The former starting right tackle for the Huskies stated, “There’s no loose-leaf cutting corners because that’s when you get into trouble with certain things.”
At Washington, DeBoer was successful right away. He turned around a Huskies team who had finished 4-8 the year before, leading them to an 11-win campaign in 2022.
Things got even better in 2023. Washington defeated Oregon in both the regular season and the Pac-12 championship game to secure a postseason berth. The team went unbeaten throughout the whole year. The Huskies qualified for the national title game and lost to Michigan there after defeating Texas in the Sugar Bowl semifinal.
Michael Penix Jr., the quarterback, became a Heisman Trophy finalist and one of the top signal-callers in college football thanks in part to DeBoer’s coaching and that of offensive coordinator Ryan Grubb.
