Where does Alabama football go from here? ‘Can’t cry in the corner’

Ty Simpson didn’t get the magical first start. Far from it, actually.

The Alabama quarterback instead led an offense that couldn’t replicate its first-drive precision. It was a performance marred with an inability to finish drives. He also showed indecisiveness at times and completed only 53% of his passes. But he’s not calling it a season.

“I’ve still got to go back to work,” Simpson said. “I can’t cry in the corner.”

Neither can Alabama. Not if the Crimson Tide wants to get the 2025 season back on track. The 31-17 loss on the road to Florida State wasn’t the way any team would want to start its season. But it’s a different era of college football. One loss doesn’t doom a season or even College Football Playoff hopes.

Still, Alabama (0-1) has plenty to fix to get back on the right back.

“We can’t play on our heels,” Crimson Tide coach Kalen DeBoer said. “We’re not going to be what we think we can be, what we want to be, if that’s the case. That falls on everyone.”

Too often, the defense fit the playing-on-heels description. The way it tackled looked like it. Florida State had its way with the Crimson Tide defense throughout the first half. The Seminoles scored points on all three drives from the start. The fourth drive didn’t result in a score only because it ran into halftime.

By the end of the day, the Seminoles had tallied 230 rushing yards and four rushing touchdowns. Florida State quarterback Tommy Castellanos rushed for 78 of those yards.

“We’ve just got to hone into the small details,” linebacker Deontae Lawson said. “I feel like that’s the thing. We let the small details get away from us and it bit us in the rear end. That’s something we can fix and we’ve got to have an urgency to do so. That’s on us leaders to push that and drive that. We’ll be fine.”

Lawson stressed the importance of the small details in many of his answers during the postgame interview. He provided one in-game example. If a defender is in a gap, they have to stay there. They can’t flip to another gap when facing a mobile quarterback such as Castellanos.

Paying attention to details also extends past the field. Lawson made that clear to his teammates in the locker room. Simpson even mentioned Lawson’s message postgame, giving examples such as finishing through the line in drills, picking up after yourself in the lunchroom, and not arriving to class even a minute l

“Just can’t be happy because we’re Alabama,” Simpson said. “We have to earn this. And we’re going to earn it.”

So there’s no time to wallow. There are no laurels on which to rest.

“It’s going to be an uphill climb for us, but you can’t think of it in the big scope of things,” DeBoer said. “You’ve got to focus on the moment. And the next moment is what happens tomorrow.”