Alabama's Game Against Tennessee Will Be A Referendum On Kalen DeBoer | Barrett Sallee

Early voting is opening up around the country, and the early returns on Alabama coach Kalen DeBoer are all over the place.

He checked off boxes that give the constituents faith, like the Georgia win and domination of Wisconsin. However, the South Carolina and USF games failed to get the "undecided vote," and the loss at Vanderbilt was comparable to Joe Biden at a presidential debate.

DeBoer will take his team on a trip to Knoxville on Saturday in what will serve as the poll that determines satisfaction or dissatisfaction with the direction of the program heading into the final days of 2024 college football campaign.

Alabama's Kalen DeBoer. (Credit: Getty Images)

Yes, the game pitting the seventh-ranked Crimson Tide and 11th-ranked Volunteers is that big.

Replacing Nick Saban

There’s no blueprint for replacing the greatest of all time, and that’s exactly what DeBoer was charged with when he got the job in January. Nick Saban is a legend, and winning at the level he did during a massive shift in the landscape of the sport is comparable to NASA putting astronauts on the moon.

If the Crimson Tide fall to one of their most heated rivals - considering the close calls and one of the most embarrassing losses in a generation of Tide football - it will send shockwaves through the fan base and college football world. It would strip them of the aura of invincibility that persisted through the Saban era.

This is different than the transition from Mike Shula to Saban in 2007. At that time, Alabama was a middle-of-the-road program that was digging out of a hole that, in part, was created by NCAA sanctions. The SEC West title in 2008 - Saban’s second at the helm - created a whiplash effect that set the tone for the future.

Tennesse quarterback Nico Iamaleava. (Photo by Jacob Kupferman/Getty Images)

DeBoer doesn’t have that same luxury. He doesn’t have to win a national title in Year 1. That’s way too big of an expectation. However, teams clearly aren’t as intimidated by that crimson helmet when they walk out of the tunnel as they were over the previous decade-and-a-half. A loss this weekend would confirm that a regression to the mean in the SEC has happened faster than anybody imagined. It simply can’t fall off to a point where it’s losing to rivals and suffering embarrassing let-downs.

Matchup Nightmare

To compound issues, this is a matchup nightmare for DeBoer’s crew. The Tide offensive line got lit up like a Christmas tree last week against South Carolina to the tune of nine tackles for loss and a quarterback in Jalen Milroe was running for his life. That line will be squaring off against a Tennessee front seven that is second in the SEC in tackles for loss per game at 8.33.

Uh oh.

Caesars Sportsbook has Alabama as a three-point road favorite, and those big buildings in the desert weren’t built on bad decisions by the house. DeBoer better follow through, because another loss on the docket will wreck his first year at the top of the ticket in Tuscaloosa.