Where Alabama football stands after preseason camp: ‘There’s a belief that’s building’

Kalen DeBoer’s third preseason camp wrapped Thursday, a week and change away from the season opener.

Now attention turns to the first game week, then to play the game against East Carolina on Saturday, Sept. 5 at Bryant-Denny Stadium.

“I believe there’s a real belief that’s building,” DeBoer told AL.com on Friday. “You can feel it.”

The Alabama coach specifically cited the appreciation he sees growing between the offense and defensive players for what the other side is doing.

“And the areas they can feel the improvement happening,” DeBoer said.

Much of it’s been about jelling with plenty of new faces at positions such as the offensive line, defensive line, quarterback and more.

But other than different personnel, has there been anything different about this year’s camp?

“I feel like we’ve been on a steady incline all of fall camp,” DeBoer said. “It’s been intentional. You’re always trying to use whatever you know from the past to help you. We’ve been, the communication to our guys, we’ve done it in a way they can see what it was in the past as far as their output. You have so much data right now. It translates to the execution.

“I think our staff’s done a good job now working together to get what they need and want to be prepared for the end of this week going into next week, getting ready for ECU.”

From all indications, this camp was productive, and DeBoer seemed encouraged. DeBoer said he liked the battles Alabama had during camp, too.

“The belief that each side has in them doing their job first of all and also the other side is going to be able to carry their weight,” DeBoer said, “that continues to grow.”

But he also gave his players a reminder at the end of camp in the form of this message.

“We haven’t done anything,” DeBoer said. “We haven’t won a game. Again, it’s using the experiences and the guys that were here, what they’ve been through to understand what it needs to look like and feel like next week and how that’s going to translate to gameday. Not just week 1 but throughout the year. But you don’t know until we’re out there.”

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