Alabama coach Kalen DeBoer spoke to reporters after the Crimson Tide’s loss to Michigan in the ReliaQuest Bowl on Tuesday. The Tide's 19-13 defeat sees it finish the 2024 campaign and the first of the DeBoer era with a 9-4 record.

Here's everything DeBoer said following the defeat.

"Obviously we dug ourselves a hole in the first quarter. The turnovers gave them great field position. I thought our defense did a good job on both of those drives of holding them to field goals — gave us a chance. Love the fight in our team at the end of the first half to gain some momentum. We just have to finish drives there in the end of the fourth quarter. That's what it comes down to — make a throw, make a catch. Guys played their hearts out, though. Never going to question the competitiveness. Some guys out there playing through a lot when it comes to the physical pain that they're trying to grind through, trying to finish this thing right. I feel for those guys. I want the guys that are coming back to remember this feeling, remember some of the feelings throughout the year. But we have to keep building and continue to move forward."

"Yeah, you think about it. Felt like it at the time — and obviously we know now that he kicked the one at the end from that distance. I just felt like we were on the fringe of what the percentages were and understanding who we are. It sounds like you don't have confidence in our kicker, which I do, but I just felt like we could convert at fourth-and-7. So, unfortunately, we didn't. Felt like the passing game when we were executing — and that's a big part of it, right — we could find a way to convert and get the ball in the right guys' hands and go make a play."

"I think there are some elements at play. Even the pick, that was a really nice play. You throw it maybe two inches out further and it's a catch for us, but they made a nice play. You guys were there. You saw the elements on the snap. You got to field it. You can't turn it over. They struggled. Fortunately for them, they had the field position where they didn't have to press until the rain moved through. But that didn't help us and dug us a rut. We had to play a different style again, but hats off to our guys at the end of the first half to understand, just get one score, and then one score led to two. I just wish we had done something at the end of the third quarter, beginning of the fourth quarter where we get maybe a field goal and put some points on the board, get the ball in the end zone."

"No, I didn't. There's things that he did — we scored a field goal with him using his legs. We went 95 yards in less than a minute. So just that factor and what we needed with him and his mobility added to the run game, I felt like that was the swap. The interception early … I thought there were still a lot of good plays he made, too. I saw the fight in his eyes. And as long as I see that I want to hang in there with the guys that this program means a lot to."

"They're one of the top-five rushing defenses. And I know that there's personnel on both sides that was different than what you'd see during the regular season, both us and them, but I think there was certainly part of our game plan where we felt we needed to spit the ball out and get the ball in the right guys' hands. We tried to do that and, whether it was slipping or incomplete passes, some of those plays didn't get executed the way you practice them for the last two, three weeks. So, yeah, there were some runs that I think Jam at the end of the game poured up in there. I thought at the end of the half I thought he did a nice job getting us out from our end zone there. He ran hard. I thought having balance was important for us in this game because of who they were and a little bit what we felt we could do to attack them."

"Every time you're in the locker room and you have something like this, it's disappointing. But I think there's a lot of things that you take from it. I know that the guys that hung in there, that probably played their last game in the crimson and white, they wouldn't have had it any other way as far as to show the grit, to show the determination, to show the competitiveness. They stayed the course. There's a whole lot more I just think that really goes into the last 12 months. People see what happens on a Saturday, but it's guys choosing to stay here, guys choosing to go from one week to the next when you're on a little bit of a roller coaster in the middle of the season. As long as we learn from it, then to me, then it can be a success moving forward. We're going to take all these things that happened — and there's some things that happened in the game today, too — that we have to learn from and make sure those mistakes don't hurt us a year from now. I don't care if it's turnovers, penalties. It's everything. So to me, it's a success if we move forward and we take advantage of the lessons — even though we don't want to learn those lessons sometimes because they're hard. We're going to learn from those lessons and move forward and be better next year because of it. I told the guys that played their last game how much I appreciate them. I know their teammates shared how much they appreciate them as well in the locker room and I know they're going to make us proud when they move on to the next level and I promised to them that we're going to continue to make them proud with the fight and the standard of competitiveness that they instilled in this program moving forward."

"Just ran into someone on our team. I'm not sure who or what."

"The losses were the ones that hurt us — a sack, being behind the chains. That's what they thrive on. Their defense does a good job of thriving on being physical, forcing you into down-and-distances where you're behind the chains. And when that happened, it's tough to overcome against a team that understands their identity, plays team football. We knew the game would get shrunk down when you knock out the first quarter, which you can't do because that's part of the game, and all of a sudden it takes on a different game of its own because you're down 16-0. You're just fighting and scrapping and trying to give yourself a chance like we did at the very end."

"I think everyone would probably share the same feeling I have — the guy always speaks about the team, he always speaks about his teammates. It's not about him and he leads that way every day in our program. And when you're the quarterback of any football team, the eyes are always on you — especially when you're at Alabama and you're going through some ups and downs every once in a while over the course of the season. It takes on a heavy burden sometimes. He's just steady. He stays the course. The fight in him, the ability to move forward, I thought that is something that even in the midst of times where he maybe didn't make a play he could have made or wanted to make or even a mistake — which everyone is going to make a mistake here and there. I thought that's one area where he's really improved, especially the last half of the season, and I think our guys appreciate that in him. I think that we've taken that on as a team, too in always trying to move forward even when we're not perfect."