Three years now we have been hearing about how the transfer portal was going to fix everything and you know what it did? It turned the offensive line into a revolving door. I read that Yahoo piece about how our historic strength became our biggest weakness in 2025 and I just about threw my phone across the room. We used to have offensive linemen that would sit in the film room with Coach Stallings until midnight learning how to pull and trap. Now we are piecing together five guys from five different programs every spring and hoping they can figure out how to block a twist stunt by September.
You watch what Coach Doolittle used to do with those lines in the early 90s and it was poetry. We had guys like that would stay in Tuscaloosa for four summers and work construction jobs just to afford to stay and lift weights. Now we got kids jumping in the portal because the NIL deal at the next school is twenty thousand dollars more. The loyalty is gone. The chemistry is gone. And we are sitting here in April trying to figure out if our new left tackle from the portal can even communicate with our returning center.
I will say this for Kalen DeBoer though. At least he is not hiding from the problem. He went out and attacked it in the portal and I respect that. But let me tell you something. You cannot buy offensive line cohesion with NIL money. That comes from summer workouts and fall camp and getting your tail whipped together. We will see if these new guys have the stomach for it come September when a SEC defensive end is standing over them.