Alabama coach Kalen DeBoer spoke to reporters after the Crimson Tide was selected to the ReliaQuest Bowl against Michigan. DeBoer discussed the Tide missing the college football playoff, potential bowl opt-outs and his message to the team during its awards banquet Sunday.

Here's everything DeBoer said.

“We weren't one of the 12 selected. We certainly feel we’re one of those and there’s things that obviously we gotta do and could have done this year but gotta make sure it's not in other people’s hands and keep ourselves focused on that next year, just knowing the process doesn’t always end up how you think it is, how you think it's gonna [end up]. So had our banquet tonight with our guys. Haven’t had a lot of one-on-one talks and things like that, certainly, they share the disappointment, but also looking forward to what lies ahead with our bowl opportunity and obviously hoping that was going to be more than one game, but we got one game together and gonna make the most of it whether it’s this season, the 2024 team or just building on it and preparing for the future and being better because of the opportunities we get here in the next couple weeks."

“There’s been a few. It’s been a busy day. We went from at first kind of understanding what the situation was gonna be as far as not being in talking to a few of the guys, still not even knowing what our bowl game was and then the bowl game announcement and then really right into our banquet and just finished that up here about 45 minutes or so ago. Again, I think just around our program, I feel like the culture’s in a good place, the mindset of guys. They’ve taken a lot of pride in what we’ve gone through and what we did this year, whether it's just the course we stayed on, the way they stuck together. But also, the resumé ain’t perfect, but there’s a lot of big moments in the season and big wins that we had this year. So there are a lot of leaders and those leaders expressed nothing but positive things as far as moving forward, whether it’s guys that are kind of on the backend of their career or just guys that are gonna be important for us moving forward, same roles or even bigger roles.

“I’m sure there will be some discussions and things like that. There always is. I would expect that whether you played the last game in January, or just finished a week ago. There’s discussions, just guys trying to understand the role and that doesn’t mean it’s bad. It just means that communication there, that’s how you build trust. And, again I feel good that our players can come talk to us and we encourage that.”

“There’s so many different pieces to this, I get that and appreciate the question for sure, but we’ve made it about this team. That’s when we’ve been at our best is when we really focus on just what it means to this program, this team. We can go back to the Iron Bowl it wasn’t about anything external, it was about this group. And that’s what we will certainly keep it to when it comes to getting ready for Michigan and the bowl game.”

“I think there’s different reasons for it throughout the course of the year and different position groups might have been hit with different things that affected them throughout that week. It might have been the matchups and some of those things that were greater challenges. It might have been the flow of the game, other things that just — a lot of things that we can control. That’s what we focus on that’s what we’ll always focus on is those that we can control. The things we can’t control or the breaks that don’t go your way — we just gotta make sure that we’re stronger because of what we went through. I think having an offseason where there’s some consistency and a longer period of time to be able to just do what I would normally do in an offseason — whether it's the details that you’d be starting in the middle of January or the end of January where — we pretty much hired our whole staff probably by the middle of February and trying to just get them to learn the offense, learn the defensive scheme. So the timeframe and the buildup and the ability now after one year to just grow the relationships, which builds trust, which leads to greater confidence. It’s just all part of the process.

“We always want to jump from — and we look at ‘Oh, there’s talent here, there’s talent there,’ there’s a process to this. And we want to skip steps and you feel like in a lot of places you can and we did in some areas but there’s some areas too that’s just as agonizing as it is sometimes you just gotta go through those tough times to really know how it can help you in the long run. So, I always kind of — learned from a good friend of mine and great coach — you always gotta look at, why is this happening to me. Sometimes you gotta look at it like, why is this happening for me? And that’s what I shared with the team all season long and that really helped them understand ‘OK, we gotta learn from everything we go through and be better because of it.’”

“Commitment for the rest of the schedule, to me its more about just commitment to the sacrifices that it takes each and every day to be out best. I don’t think it was necessarily, especially at that time, focused on someone we might lose two weeks later when the portal opens or anything like that. I don’t think it was really directed towards that it was more towards the day-to-day work that it takes and the process that we focus on to be successful is making sure that that was the case getting ready for the Iron Bowl. That was the next week.”

“Yeah, you’re always excited, I don’t think it’s going to be because of opt outs though. I think from what I feel right now and I’m not saying there won’t be one but I feel like right now we’re in a place where most of those guys are planning on playing. I don’t care what round they’re planning on going in, and we’ll see, but that’s my early just understanding having talked with a few guys and these guys are committed to this place. There’s been a streak of 10-win seasons or more and they got a lot of pride in this program and want to continue to move forward and want to play and spend one more game with their brothers on this football team. So I think we’re in a good spot. There’s gonna be some things I’m sure with some guys moving on out of the program and I think some have already announced already that they don’t plan on being here, and that’s gonna be the case I think every year and especially here as we go through our first full cycle where we’re working together with them as well.

“Last year, we were really just in full retention mode. There was no portal for us to take any guys from, I guess other than programs that lost head coaches, and that’s the situation we were in. So, again we’re gonna build our program with the freshman class which I’m really excited about, the signees. We’re gonna retain and we’re gonna develop the guys we have here and fill in the areas that need some numbers or maybe just need to be a little better on the football field on Saturdays. So that’s a fluid thing and I feel like communication is where it all starts.”

“I think they’re aware that just our style of offense this year, it was all about whatever it took to win, and I’ll credit those guys, they did a great job of doing whatever they needed to do to help us win. And we’ve got a lot of unselfish guys that from year to year is gonna change and evolve based on the personnel we have. The style’s gonna be different. It might not just be your quarterback. It might be the number of receivers or tight ends. We’re gonna try to have guys that fit a little bit of what we envision it being down the road, but that’s kind of what I really appreciate about our guys is it was all about whatever it took to win and them taking a back seat to whatever it took to do that for them individually and all of these guys did that.”

“I don’t anticipate you seeing him in the bowl, but he’s been out there and we were excited — this must’ve been about, maybe a week or two ago — to see him out there running around and doing some things. Again, not any type of full contact yet at that point, but it was fun to see his body out there running around and he brings a smile on his face and I know he was enjoying that moment, getting out there — just working through the process and progressing along. Man, he’s been amazing, going back to the time he even had the injury just with his mindset, and I know our guys really respect him for that and appreciate the grind he’s been putting in to come back as quick as he possibly can.”

“I think bowl games, any type of postseason is just always critical. You’re just playing more football and more football helps everyone. It keeps you sharp, it keeps you moving forward, progressing. When you don’t have this time, really what are you doing? It’s a struggle to get better. So, more meetings and there will be some practices where we can dedicate that to maybe some younger guys and development there, more so than we would if we were getting ready for a game during the course of the regular season or even postseason too if you’re in the playoff. But certainly, these are added practices that we will take advantage of.”

“I think a lot of our team, that might be a position or two, but with a lot of our team being the same for the most part that I would expect for the bowl game that’s been on teh field — again, the development I think of the guys that maybe aren’t playing as much, yes that can happen and something you’re focused on. But we’re trying to maximize the opportunity to go win a football game on December 31, and so there will be a lot of focus on those guys and us finishing this year strong. These guys that are choosing to play this last game, they’re doing it to win it and finishing it out the way its supposed to be done.”

“As far as the future, that’s something that I’ll let Greg [Byrne] lead the charge on. He’s understanding and we’ll figure that out moving forward but we want to play competitive games. We want to play in the best games and I understand how it didn’t feel like that definitely wasn’t rewarded it felt like with our schedule and the wins we had against teams that were ranked or now ranked or even ranked at the time, because there’s even like an LSU was ranked at the time and isn’t anymore. But I’ll let Greg administratively kind of lead the charge and better understand what needs to be done in the future if anything at all. I know we’ve got what you would consider some higher-profile games against programs that traditionally have been very successful. We want to be a part of that. That’s the exciting thing about college football is being in as many big games as possible. We don’t want to back down to that, we want to be a part of it and that hopefully will be rewarded down the road.”

“I think the latter half of the season its been a little bit better and there’s always reasons for different rotations. It might be that you got competition battles in some cases and I’m not even just talking about offensive line but just in some areas it’s just a way with some guys building their competitive stamina for the course of the game. And then sometimes, like you said, it’s injury-related. So, I felt like our offensive line early in the season certainly was going through a lot of that. I think there’s been solid and consistent growth there. Some matchups are gonna be tougher than others. Some as a whole offensive line, sometimes it’s a defense and just the different things they do to make the run game tough or protection a little more challenging.

“So what you want to do is have an offense that can be balanced and balanced is to me all about the ability to run or pass when that’s needed because your opponent is going to try to take your best stuff away. So some of that balls on the offensive line and some of that falls on other positions being able to exploit when possible or when those things come up to where they’re taking this away, you go to that or vice versa. So we just gotta keep growing our entire offense. So that way we can take pressure, in particular, like you’re talking about, the offensive line and I think a lot of it is just execution. It’s always better execution and that just comes with reps, and I think we got better in a lot of ways with reps for our whole offense but our offensive line too.”

“I feel it’s very positive and I’ll let those guys make their announcements and talk to the team. We’ll have a team meeting tomorrow. We’ll have opportunities throughout the week. That meeting was scheduled no matter what the case was. We were gonna work out tomorrow no matter what and so I’ll let those guys talk but it’s positive for those guys, it’s positive for others too. So I feel like we’re in a good space in what these guys are trying to accomplish whether its seniors and the guys using up and finishing their eligibility and the guys that are trying to figure out their course of action related to potentially going to the NFL Draft. So these are the decisions they’re going through right now.”