Inside The Huskies

The Courtship of DeBoer Continues; It's Up to Him and What He Wants

The UW coach has to decide if Alabama is a good fit for him as he becomes the leading candidate.
Dan Raley|
The Courtship of DeBoer Continues; It's Up to Him and What He Wants
The Courtship of DeBoer Continues; It's Up to Him and What He Wants

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Washington Huskies

Moments following the University of Washington football team's 34-13 loss to Michigan in the CFP national championship game, coach Kalen DeBoer chose to give a state of the union address rather than an explanation for what went wrong.

He sat on a stage deep inside NRG Stadium in Houston, looking a little emotional and spent but still firm in his beliefs, all of which have made him one of the most successful college football coaches anywhere in a short amount of time.

Rather than bemoan the mistakes made by his Huskies or the physical disadvantage they experienced against no one else this season except this Big Ten powerhouse, DeBoer continued the selling job of his Montlake football program, speaking to his returning players and potential recruits everywhere.

"A lot of guys have seen what it takes," DeBoer said in his opening statement. "And because of what we've done this year, we'll be very attractive for guys to come in, for guys who want to win championships to come into this program and believe that it can happen again next year."

Forty-eight hours later, everything changed, to no fault of his own, to the great discomfort of UW football followers everywhere.

Nick Saban retired and — because DeBoer has made himself the hottest new coach in college football — naturally the Husky leader was going to be linked immediately to the Alabama job. Just like his name previously was bandied about for the Texas A&M opening. And continues to be discussed should Michigan and Jim Harbaugh part ways.

On Friday, DeBoer was supposed to do a much-publicized 8 a.m. radio segment for the Chuck and Buck Show on KJR 93.3 and canceled, which was not surprising.

Not only does the Husky coach owe it to himself and his family to see if he should or can become the next Alabama coach, he's in the middle of contract negotiations with the UW. One or the other is going to be his future in football going forward.

Further complicating this for the UW, Florida State's Mike Norvell, the other leading candidate, disclosed on Friday he would not be leaving his position in Tallahassee, which seemingly makes DeBoer the top target.

The most endearing quality for DeBoer — and this is why his Husky players responded to him so well and were so successful on the field — is he's genuine and honest. They felt that about him almost immediately. His coaches feel that way, too. The fans have noticed. The media has observed as much. 

On Wednesday, DeBoer appeared on a Zoom call for the Bear Bryant Awards and told how his heart still ached for his players after he and the Huskies weren't able to beat Michigan in the CFP title game and bring home a trophy. He described this telling experience for nearly three minutes.

Time element is one of those things that DeBoer reminds his players of over and over again, and why they should give all that they've got on the field at all times, because football is done before you know it.

"The time they have to play college is so short," he said. "As a coach I've been doing this for over 20 years. So this time frame for me has lent some amazing experiences. Not that this year wasn't, because we won a Pac-12 championship and we were 14-0 at one point. But you always want more, right? You always want more and that's the world we live in. That's just human nature. That more is holding a national championship trophy."

Now the same holds true for DeBoer. Time is short for a college football coach, too, just as he tells his players. He deserves to take a look at Alabama, to take the job if he feels it fits him. After all, he's a competitor at the highest level.

On Monday night, DeBoer sat alongside linebacker Edefuan Ulofoshio and quarterback Michael Penix Jr. after the CFP title game, players who as pros very well could resemble another Bobby Wagner and the incomparable left-handed passer in Steve Young. DeBoer singled out these veterans and their teammates for changing the face of Husky football back to something great, which made it resemble the high-water James and Owens eras.

“These guys have restored Husky football to what it’s supposed to be — the expectation is to win," DeBoer said. "There is no feeling of consolation. The goal was to win.”

In and outside of Seattle, people have marveled how this coach came in and took these very same players who had lost all faith and hope in football while bottoming out in 2021 with a 4-8 record, simply added Penix and a few others to the mix and began winning, to the point they did this continuously for the past 15 months.

It was amazing to everyone, to the UW players, their fans and college football followers, how this all came together so quickly in Seattle, with the Huskies becoming as cohesive and successful as much as they were disjointed and unrewarded under the previous coaching regime.

It was a story unlike any other in college football in recent times, with a somewhat unknown coach in DeBoer taking on what others would have labeled a significant rebuild that would take plenty of man hours and new faces to fix only for him to reload with the existing talent and give them positive energy and inspirational leadership.

With the title game only minutes old, DeBoer was asked pointedly if he had surprised himself by achieving so much success in such a short amount of time and bringing his players to Texas thinking they could win it all. His answer was all about fitting the dominoes together perfectly and creating a groundswell of success that lasted for 21 consecutive games, beginning in 2022 and ending in 2024.    

"I felt like at the end of last season, the last few games of the year, you could really feel like if everyone kept it together that this could happen," the coach said. "When you're in the moment, when you're going through it, it's not about all of a sudden going from 4-2, which we were at one point, to saying, 'Hey, we're going to go win a national championship.' But I felt like there were some of the makings of being a special football team."

Again, DeBoer reminded his players over and over that football lasts for only a short window of time and they might as well do things right and enjoy the moment as much as they can, that there would be carryover in the rest of their lives.

"Credit to the guys, they just hung in there with the process and just focused on improving every single day, a year ago and this year," DeBoer said. "It's just built up to this moment and it's execution. It's physical toughness. It's all led to a mindset where anything that comes their way, they felt like they could come through and get it done."

DeBoer was responsible for this determined positive approach because he lives it every minute of the day. Even when the Huskies fell behind Michigan, and the clock was ticking down, the coach never gave up hope that something good would happen.

"I truly feel like five minutes ago, man, there was nothing but belief that we would find a way to win that football game," he said. "I really believe that."

Four days removed from this high-water mark in Husky football history, the school now is in danger of losing its highly successful coach. As long as he kept winning, this was always going to be the case. Alabama. Texas A&M. Michigan. USC. One or all of them were going to come after this coach.

After all, Ohio State and the Seahawks made serious runs at the legendary Don James and he thought about those opportunities and said no. Texas A&M wanted Jim Owens to come back and run the place after he had been an assistant for Bear Bryant and become the hot coach nationally at the UW, and he declined that offer

However, Darrell Royal couldn't say no to Texas and left the UW after the 1956 season for Austin and became a coaching legend, nor could Steve Sarkisian turn down USC and he's now coaching at Texas, playing games in Darrell K. Royal Memorial Stadium.

It's up to DeBoer to see what he wants to do with his coaching career and decide fairly soon. 

 

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Dan Raley
DAN RALEY

Dan Raley has worked for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, as well as for MSN.com and Boeing, the latter as a global aerospace writer. His sportswriting career spans four decades and he's covered University of Washington football and basketball during much of that time. In a working capacity, he's been to the Super Bowl, the NBA Finals, the MLB playoffs, the Masters, the U.S. Open, the PGA Championship and countless Final Fours and bowl games.

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