‘It’s been about adapting.’ Penn State DC Tom Allen has created elite defense in first season

Tom Allen shuffled his hands on the table as he spoke during his pre-Orange Bowl press conference Tuesday afternoon. Allen is in his first year as Penn State’s defensive coordinator, and took over the job after being Indiana’s head coach for seven years.

“I don’t sit still very well. I don’t rest very well,” Allen said.

And so it should be no surprise that he was out of the game for only a month after getting fired by the Hoosiers in November 2023.

His decision to join Penn State was going to be a change for someone who led a program for nearly a decade. But ultimately it became a welcome one for himself and the Nittany Lions.

Allen has adapted to Penn State and helped it maintain its status as one of the best defenses in the country, while being a driving force as the team plays in the College Football Playoff semifinal against Notre Dame.

His arrival has come with change, though, for both him and Penn State. The defensive coordinator was willing to adapt who he was, despite his previous success, because Penn State had a strong track record of its own on that side of the ball.

“It’s been about adapting to what our guys do well here and really meshing the things that I wanted to do and have done with the things that they’ve done really well here,” Allen said. “So it’s been different. A lot of places I’ve gone to as defensive coordinator, I pretty much just brought in our system. ... But that was not the case here. And for obvious reasons. They played such a high level of defense and had so many guys back. Didn’t want to make a lot of changes. So that’s been that’s been unique and different.”

The blend has worked exceedingly well thus far. Allen has Penn State’s defense No. 5 in ESPN analyst Bill Connelly’s SP+, a tempo- and opponent-adjusted measure of college football efficiency. And he has done so while making a dramatic adjustment on gamedays — one that doesn’t suit his energetic personality.

Allen moved from the sideline to the booth for games after Penn State’s Week 2 win over Bowling Green, no longer calling his defense from field level and instead taking a birds-eye view of the field to make his calls.

That has been an adjustment for the man who has roamed the sidelines for so long. And there are still parts of it that he misses.

“Just the passion, the emotion, the energy in the stadium,” Allen said when asked what he misses about being on the field during games. “I love it. I do.”

But that change, like many of the others, has led to more success for Penn State. Allen’s defense has been at the top of its game for most of the season and has generally been able to avoid the pitfalls that can come for a college defense.

Yes, there are weaker performances like the one against Oregon, but that was followed up by arguably the group’s best of the season against an SMU offense that resembles the one that the Ducks possess.

He has adapted each step of the way — even going away from a favorite coverage of his because the game has changed and he is changing with it.

“We had always been a big quarters [coverage] type team,” Allen said. “Really started getting away from that and came here and really just didn’t do that at all. ... Separating from that has taken me some getting used to because I’d rely on that in a lot of situations. But at the same time, it’s adapting to both your players then also what offenses are doing in today’s game.”

Those adjustments are nothing new for Allen. He’s traversed the football landscape, going from high school coordinator to Division III assistant to Division I head coach, with plenty of stops in between. And at each stop he has continually moved upward, further proving his value as a college football coach.

Ask offensive coordinator Andy Kotelnicki, and he’ll tell you that those early days are part of what make Allen and the rest of the Penn State staff special.

“When you get to this level and you sit around and talk [about] this kind of stuff, it can change people really quick, you know what I mean, money and all that,” Kotelnicki said. “And he’s just been so down to earth. What I really have loved about our staff in general, and it starts with [head coach] James [Franklin], Tom, myself and [special teams coordinator Justin] Lustig — we’re all just a bunch of small college slappers, man. We all played small college football. We all started coaching at that level. And now we’re here, right? And so we’ve all spent time painting lines. We’ve all spent time, you know, changing equipment and fitting kids for shoulder pads and helmets, which a lot of people haven’t had to do when you’re coaching at a place like Penn State, and so he embodies that.”

Allen’s humility has only been matched by his proficiency as a coach. He has seen it all in his three-plus decades of coaching when it comes to situations and people.

But he hasn’t seen a College Football Playoff semifinal yet — until Thursday.

And that’s when Allen will have a chance to continue proving that he remains one of the best defensive coordinators in college football — even after seven years away from doing it.

This story was originally published January 7, 2025 at 8:48 PM.

Jon Sauber

Centre Daily Times

(814) 231-6461

Jon Sauber covers Penn State football and men’s basketball for the Centre Daily Times. He earned his B.A. in digital and print journalism from Penn State and his M.A. in sports journalism from IUPUI. His previous stops include jobs at The Indianapolis Star, the NCAA, and Rivals.