Succeeding somebody like Manny Diaz isn’t easy, nor is being the defensive coordinator at a place where defensive excellence is routinely expected such as Penn State.
The man in charge with tackling both of those tasks is much different from his predecessor.
Diaz, the son of a man who once ran the city of Miami, comes across as somebody who could be a CEO.
When he’s coaching, Allen, as recently retired PennLive columnist David Jones described it, “looks like your favorite high school gym teacher, ballcap bill curled in a half circle and pulled down tight over his Woody Hayes specs, ready to either slap an ass or kick it depending on the need. And nobody has been seen in more fist-shaking locker room pep-talk videos the past few years. Allen looks like he was beamed in from the 1970s.”
Through Allen’s first three games as Penn State DC, there were already plenty of peaks and valleys.
But in the second half of Penn State’s 21-7 win over Illinois Saturday night, everything clicked.
There are plenty of stats I could rattle off, but the fact that Penn State allowed 39 total yards of offense in the second half says everything.
“That’s the Penn State defense ya’ll know, safety Jaylen Reed told Nittany Sports Now afterward. “That’s the Penn State defense that we usually play. That’s the Penn State defense that we usually play like every game.”
Penn State made a statement in that second half and an epic way to prove that, while Allen might or might not be as good as Diaz, he’s a worthy successor.
Before Saturday night, people weren’t too sure.
PENN STATE SERIOUSLY ALMOST LOST TO BOWLING GREEN!?!
Penn State’s defense played well Week 1 at West Virginia, allowing just 12 points.
But after the next week against Bowling Green, people had reason to worry.
Sure, a win is a win, as the cliche goes.
But this win felt hollow.
PSU came in as a 34.5-point favorite and, despite scoring 34 points, didn’t come anywhere close to covering that spread.
A lot of people justifiably blamed the defense. Bowling Green scored 24 points in the first half and didn’t punt until there were 10:20 left in the third quarter. Although Penn State didn’t give up a touchdown in the second half, the fact that it needed to be that dominant in the last 30 minutes to beat Bowling Green scared people.
The concerns worsened days later when head coach James Franklin announced that one of Penn State’s best players, KJ Winston, was out with a “long-term injury.”
A shutout of lowly Kent State the next week proved little, but the next week’s domination of Illinois could well go down as the night everything clicked.
And it was Allen who was in charge of making the adjustments after allowing an opening-drive touchdown.
To be fair, it’s easier to adjust with the caliber of athletes that schools like Penn State can recruit and schools like Indiana can’t.
PENN STATE HAS A LETHAL COMBINATION
Here’s a brief rundown of Tom Allen’s resume before he got to Penn State.
- Drake (2010)
- Arkansas State (2011)
- Ole Miss (2012-14)
- South Florida (2015)
- Indiana (2016-23)
What sticks out there?
Aside from Ole Miss, none of these schools are comparable to Penn State in terms of resources and recruiting possibilities.
In Allen’s three seasons at Ole Miss, where he was the linebackers and special teams coach, the Rebels won 7, 7 and 9 games, not yet the formidable contender they’ve become under Lane Kiffin.
At Indiana, signing a blue chip recruit is a big deal. At Penn State, it’s more of a surprise when a recruit signs that isn’t a four-star. This gives Allen the opportunity to coach the type of athlete he seldom got to coach before.
A great example took place this past Saturday night.
Dom DeLuca, a senior captain and regular starter, couldn’t go due to injury.
Penn State had a blue-chipper to replace him in DaKarri Nelson.
That’s an advantage Allen has at Penn State that he wouldn’t have had at Indiana, and it also helps to coach players like Abdul Carter, Dani Dennis-Sutton and Zane Durant, all of which will be playing on Sundays.
THE BEGINNING OF A BEAUTIFUL FRIENDSHIP?
When Diaz took the job, any Penn State fan with common sense knew he wouldn’t be in it long.
Diaz had been a winning Power Four coach before, and being only 47 when he took the job, there was no reason to believe he wouldn’t want to do it again.
Allen is 54, certainly young enough to rejoin the head-coaching ranks— his successor at Indiana, Curt Cignetti, took the job at 62.
But of Allen, Diaz and current Penn State OC Andy Kotelnicki— who’s already being linked to potential HC openings a third of the way through his first season as OC— Allen seems to be the one most likely to settle into the coordinator role.
In this age of NIL in the transfer portal where college head coaches are leaving for coordinator positions in the NFL or, in the case of Chip Kelly, another team within the conference, nobody could blame a coach for being just fine as an assistant.
And being the defensive coordinator at Penn State isn’t too bad.
There’s a tradition of defensive excellence in Happy Valley, and Allen’s unit is proving to be worthy of the task.
