Everything Kalen DeBoer Said During Alabama's Bye Week Teleconference

The Alabama football team may be on a bye this week, but there has already been substantial change in its upcoming home matchup with LSU, as the program now has a new head coach.

During the weekly SEC coaches' teleconference on Wednesday, Crimson Tide head coach Kalen DeBoer addressed the LSU coaching changes, injury updates in No. 4 Alabama's receiver room, this past weekend's game at South Carolina and more.

A full transcript of DeBoer's remarks is below. The game on Nov. 8 between the Crimson Tide and Tigers at Bryant-Denny Stadium is scheduled to kick off at 6:30 p.m. CT on ABC.

Opening Statement:

"Proud of the guys, and just the way we found a way to win on Saturday. Much needed bye week for us right now. Guys are utilizing it the right way and looking forward to being fresh... this week and going into next week's prep for LSU."

On injury updates for Lotzeir Brooks and Isaiah Horton:

"I expect those guys to be ready to go for LSU. So, Lottie was, especially, rolling out there today and making good progress. Isaiah just got dinged up in the first half there in the game. He's making good progress too. But I'd expect the both of them to be ready for LSU."

On the running game and the interior of the offensive line:

"I think it's the whole group. It's not just one person or one part of it. It's the whole group. It's a different piece, not being consistent and doing what they gotta do every single play. There's good reps and then there's ones where we struggle. We gotta be better. I think it's just also being in sync with our running backs, and them giving us something, too, on the back end. Whether that's falling ahead for yards, or breaking tackles, I think it's a full group effort. A lot goes on the offensive line, obviously, but we've just gotta keep working, keep getting better."

On Qua Russaw's status:

"Yeah, he's doing really good. On a timeline that we had hoped, or maybe even a little bit of ahead. Don't know exactly what that's gonna be, just, we're not quite there yet, but he's making great progress, and you can see just even in his face, he's feeling good about the direction it's going and can't wait to get back out there."

On Jah-Marien Latham's leadership while sidelined:

"He was, I mean, he's out there today cheering the guys on. Just like those guys we talk about that are on the field, that bring great energy, there's so much respect for Jah-Marien, and you see that and how important it is for him for us to be successful. So, yeah, he's out there cheering us on and helping other guys out, looking at the calls. He's engaged. Even understanding his circumstances."

On the relationship between Ryan Grubb and Ty Simpson:

"There's a relationship that exists where you just enjoy hanging out, and I think that continues to grow. What adds to it is the experiences that they've gone through. The moments that they've fought together, and been on the same page, and come through and had success. It's just a great room that we have there with the quarterbacks. It involves those two, it involves Nick Sheridan, who does an amazing job, along with the other two guys who are so supportive with Austin and Keelon. So, yeah, their relationship and just the way they communicate, it becomes more and more efficient. There's reps that they can refer to now because of their experiences together where Coach Grubb can say something and Ty can quickly understand what the meaning is and what the expectation is and how we should execute when that moment comes up the next time."

On whether Jason Voorhees or a werewolf would have a greater NIL valuation:

"I don't think I'm that educated on the movie to understand, you know? I don't know. I don't have a good answer for you... Name one? I suppose Jason. You said name one. I don't have a reason for why I'm saying that, though."

On how the program has progressed from last season in the context of games like South Carolina:

"Yeah, I agree with you. You never know. I mean, guys who made plays, but I think the thing you saw on the sideline was still a belief and a fight, and everyone having some energy, which is gonna lead to giving you a chance to win. And so, we just needed better execution at times, and unfortunately it took us a while to get there in certain phases of the game, and we made enough plays, though, to keep it at arm's length and make the drive at the end there to tie it, and the two-point conversion's ready. Some of it is, too, I think about the plays at the end, whether it's the first touchdown, the second touchdown or everything that led up to it. There's just concepts and things that we executed on both sides of the ball that we've just had so many repetitions of, whether it's been something we've shown on film and actually done, that might not be the case, but we've had enough repetitions in practice to where there's a confidence when we lined up, for example, to run the two-point conversion. Our guys didn't flinch. There was no one that had to think about, 'Okay, what's my job on this play? We've never run this.' They've repped it so many times that they just went out there and executed. And it's something no one has seen here, at least recently, to prep for. So, just, banked reps leads to confidence, which leads to execution, especially in the critical times. But we just kept applying pressure and we understand that's what we gotta do. You might be right [about this game possibly being a loss last year]. I compared a little bit with someone else, someone brought up the Vanderbilt game a year ago, where we had a drive going down the field and we ended up turning it over, but that drive could've been a chance to win the game. That was similar to this last week, where we would've had a chance, and we got an unfortunate bounce off of one of our players on the punt return, and that set the opponent up and South Carolina scored a touchdown. But we didn't flinch. We came back and kept playing ball."

On whether Ty Simpson was off in the game and how he played as a whole:

"You can look at just one thing, I mean, completion percentage. I mean, he's an accurate passer, really accurate, and his standard's extremely high relative to others. That alone, right there, is an indication that for one reason or another, we weren't hitting as clean and as efficient as we like to. Of course, that always falls on the quarterback. It always does, but there's other ways we could've helped him. You could protect a little bit better. You can run a route a little bit better. You can catch the ball a couple more times on those balls that were catch-and-contact. So, it's a full unit, and it does fall on Ty, but he, again, made the plays down the stretch. He battled, and if there was anyone that believed, it was him. And that was certainly something our team felt, and that's why they kept playing till the very end."

On the challenge of playing LSU after their coaching changes:

"Really, it's just the one side of the ball with the offensive coordinator position on their end, and so just understanding you might get some different looks, some different tendencies, things like that. So, those players are out there and we understand how talented they are. They got a lot of juice, a lot of speed, lot of playmakers. So, we gotta be at our best, and seeing teams that come together or seeing teams that fall apart, we can't worry about that, [be]cause we don't control that piece. We can just control who we are and we gotta continue to get better on our end."