Report: Penn State will hire Tom Allen, who used to be the head coach at Indiana, as their defensive coordinator.
Allen was Indiana’s head coach for seven years and lost 33 games out of 49. He was fired to late November of this year. This season, Indiana went 3–9 and lost its last game 35–31 to Purdue.
He was hired by Indiana as its defensive coordinator in 2016 and quickly fixed a defense that had been a weakness. After Kevin Wilson was fired suddenly, he was moved to head coach.
As head coach, he led the Hoosiers to back-to-back winning the seasons and bowl games in 2019 and 2020.
The latter season was especially memorable, as the team went 6-2 in general and 6-1 in Big Ten play, with wins over Penn State and Michigan. Unfortunately for Tom, the best season of his time in Bloomington was the 2020 season.
After that, things went downhill quickly, with the Hoosiers coming 2-10, 4-8, and 3-9 over the subsequent three seasons before the IU administration thought it was time for a change.
The summer is long, so we can talk about what this hire means to feed the defense going forward.
However, James Franklin has made it clear that when he names coordinators, he expects them to be head coaches of their own teams.
Additionally, hiring a recently fired head coach worked out well for the defense the last time, so it might be a good idea to do that again.
Plus, Allen will be collaborating with a lot more talent and depth compared with he ever could have imagined at Indiana.
Tom Allen, who used to be the head coach at Indiana, is about to be named Penn State’s new defensive coordinator.
Peet Thamel of ESPN was first to publish the news. Allen would take over for Manny Diaz, who quit after two years to become the coach in charge at Duke.
Allen was Indiana’s head coach for seven years. He had two good years, 2019 and 2020, during which he was named a AFCA coach of the year. After that, he had a rough patch.
In the same way, Penn State teacher James Franklin hired Diaz after he was fired from Miami two years ago. It proved out to be a great choice for both leaders.
Diaz used his success to get the job at Duke, and Franklin showed that Penn State’s DC job is one of the best in the country. Franklin could do the same thing with Allen, who used to be the head coach at Indiana.
Franklin has always had good things to say about Allen. Franklin said last year, “Good man, fine person, good coach.” Allen used his defense skills to build his career and make Indiana better.
Some of his early defenses for Indiana were great at preventing touchdowns and stopping offenses on third down.
Allen could use a fresh start just as much as Diaz did. You can play defense in more than one way, not just the way we did.
“I’ve had three defensive coordinators that were each able to play at a high level, and we’ve taken an analogous approach with all three,” said Franklin. “But then we’ve also hired people for a certain thing.”
A huge number of wonderful moments and connections have been made. They believed in our mission and gave their all to this program. I’ll always be thankful for them.
Indiana’s defense has been bad lately, but things got better when Allen became their defensive coordinator in 2016. That year, he was promoted because of the improvements.
His work with the defense helped them finish in the top half of the FBS. Before, they were named No. 121 out of 128 teams for total defense (allowing 509.5 yards) and No. 117 in scoring (37.6).