Notes and Quotes From Tom Allen's Media Monday: Penn State Game

Written by Sammy Jacobs (@Hoosier_Huddle)

Indiana head coach Tom Allen met with the media for his weekly in-season press conference. Below are the notes and quotes from his press conference ahead of Indiana’s season opener on Saturday against Penn State

Notes:

- Indiana’s game at Rutgers has been scheduled for 3:30pm on Saturday, October 31s and will be televised on BTN.

Image: Indiana University Athletics

- Michael Penix, Harry Crider, Marcelino Ball, Micah McFadden and Cam Jones have been named 2020 game captains.

- IU will be wearing an ‘Equity Fist’ on their jerseys and helmets as well as their warmup gear this season as a sign of peace and unity.

- Covid Numbers and Non-Participants will be announced Saturday.

Tom Allen Quotes:

Opening Statement:

“It is great to be with you guys today. It feels awesome to be able to be in game week mode. We have been through so much to get to this point, so there is a lot of excitement from our players, from myself, and from our whole staff to be in this position. We are very thankful, very blessed. It has been quite the journey to get to this point.
We are going to be hosting the Penn State Nittany Lions here on Saturday at Memorial Stadium. I have so much respect for [Penn State head coach] James Franklin and what he has built there at Penn State. Obviously, tremendous tradition but they have done a great job building that roster. They have so much depth and talent up front. We are really impressed with their offensive and defensive lines. It is really where it all starts for us, as we all know. They have so much speed on both sides of the football. They are tremendously well coached. The new offensive coordinator [Kirk Ciarrocca] did a tremendous job at Minnesota. He brings a ton of experience and a high level of play calling and preparation. We know that make them more challenging than ever, probably. We really have a ton of respect for the program that they run and how hard their kids compete and play. We know we are going to have to play our very best to be able to do the things we want to do against a top-10 team in the country. We are really excited for the opportunity. To be able to begin Big Ten play here at home and be able to have our players, be able to exhibit, all the hard work that they put into to this.
We are excited to be able to name our captains this week. We voted as a football team, and it was pretty clear who the guys want in those positions. It is an honor to be selected by your teammates and your peers. Michael Penix Jr. and Harry Crider are the two guys on offense that were selected as captains. Marcelino Ball, Micah McFadden and Cam Jones are the three on defense. Obviously, with the Marcelino situation he will not be playing this season as he will be having surgery this week, so he will probably not be able to be very active in that role on game day. At the same time, his leadership is obvious by the way his teammates feel about him. The way he has handled this tough situation with so much maturity, a positive attitude, and the way he has helped the guys in his position develop and coach those guys up. I am excited for that group to represent. Man, I tell you one thing though, we had so many guys get votes, more so than I can ever remember. I think is just speaks to the breadth of the leadership on this team and the guys that have been not just good football players the last couple years, but also young men that are respected by the teammates. A lot of other guys could have easily been selected. I challenged the whole team, they all need to understand that just because the guy is not picked as a captain, does not diminish his role on this team in a leadership capacity to help this team be what we want to be.
I wanted to announce that we are going to be having an equity fist that is going to be represented on our jerseys and our helmets as a patch to be able to do something for our university and for our athletic programs. We got together, myself and our leadership council, this past summer with all the issues going on in our country, with social justice, and we wanted to be able to do something to raise awareness. We got together as a whole university and came together with this equity fist. It is going to be representative on all sports teams, but we are going to be wearing it on our upper right-hand chest of our jersey and on the back of our helmet. In pregame we will be having it on both our shirts that we wear and the shorts that we wear. The players are excited about that as a sign of unity, as a sign of togetherness, peace and love that we want to promote. The respect for others that are different than us and look different. I have come from different backgrounds and I want to challenge our team. I want us to be a beacon of what it looks like to love each other and care about one another, no matter where you are from, and no matter whether you have differences or not. We have to be able to work together to make the world a better place, make Bloomington a better city, make the state of Indiana a better state, and have that impact across this country. I am excited about that and I know our players are as well.
We are excited about this week. I said it already I will say it again. We have a lot of hard work ahead of us to get prepared to play an excellent football team. I am looking forward to answering your questions and getting this week started.”

On Opening with a Big Ten Opponent:

“I think there are several things that go into the game that make it more unique and more challenging. The most obvious one is the delay of the schedule, and the start to stop. Everything we have been through leading up to this point and the way that you had to prepare as a team. You do not have any preseason games, so you try to use your scrimmages as those preseason games and get your team ready. You have a lot of those unanswered questions, the lack of hitting. We all are dealing with the same situation, especially all the Big Ten teams right now. At the same time, I think that there are some advantages to having the time we have had. We have had an extensive amount of meetings to get to the mental side of it. Great foundation laid there. We have had… we were basically segmented because of COVID-19 and following the rules of how many guys you could work with at a time. Even during the time when we did the first fall camp and then we had the break, we still had things we could do with our players. I think we have had some more individual, even our younger guys have gotten more reps, and more attention from coaches because of the way and all of this was broken down. That is a positive. The rest of the things are very challenging. You throw in the mix of opening with a Big Ten team and there is no chance to get broken in. It feels a lot like 2017 when we opened against Ohio State here at home, which is my first official game as a head coach, in terms of a home game, I had coached in the bowl game prior to that. That was a challenging opportunity. It feels similar to that in playing a team of that caliber. The bottom line is, you have to have all those typical first game questions answered. The margin for error is much smaller and then you throw in the other variable that you mentioned, which is a new offensive coordinator. There is no question you watch what he did at Minnesota but it is never going to look the same. The personnel is different and every year is a little different. You do not really know for sure. You have an idea, but you do not know for sure. You are trying to figure all that stuff out. There has to be a lot of adjustments made after the first couple series on both sides of the football and probably even on special teams. That is where our coaching staff has to be really, really sharp with that area, be able to adapt to what they are showing us and what they are doing to us. We have to have answers. You take all those things combined and it creates a much more challenging situation. Like I said, everybody is in a similar situation, other than the coordinator for us. I guess you could say the same thing for us because we have a new coordinator, as well, on offense. Both teams are facing a similar situation.

On Penn State Potentially Not Having Starting Running Back Journey Brown:

“I would say it has very little [impact]. He is a tremendously talented player but they have a stable full of running backs that are extremely talented. That is the first I have heard of that, but we would not dwell on that. Bottom line is that they are a great football team. Their offensive line makes them go, they have an excellent quarterback, a very talented receiver corps and arguably one of the best tight ends in in the country, definitely one of the best. I have tremendous respect for their personnel. They have recruited at an extremely high level with that position, so if he is not there, you will have somebody else that is extremely talented, a future NFL running back, taking snaps.”

On Getting Over the Hump of Beating a Top-10 Team:

“Well first of all, I do think it adds a sense of urgency and a heightened focus to your guys when they know they are playing a team of the caliber of Penn State to open the season in everything that you do. Obviously, we did not know this until a month or so ago, but at the same time, it has been something that once we knew we were going to conference only schedule, for the longest time we thought we were opening against Wisconsin. Either way, we knew we were going to have one of the top teams in the country as an opener. It shifted from Wisconsin focus to Penn State once they changed the schedule. The bottom line is, that is the schedule that we were handed and we do not ever really talk about anything other than we have goals as a program and beating those top-25 teams is something that we have not been able to do a lot in the past. As one of our team's goals, the team came up with these and that is the objective that we have. Obviously, playing a team like Penn State gives us that opportunity. When you talk about what is next for our program, it is winning these games. Obviously, being close is no longer acceptable, the goal, or the objective whatsoever. It is to find a way to finish and win these games. We have been in them, we have been close, but we now have to finish them. We have talked a lot about that. It is really process driven, so it is really the outcome of it all. When we take care of things the right way, obviously, there are a lot of variables that go into a game. The bigger the game is, the heightened attention to detail needs to be in all three phases. I think special teams is one that has been a major factor in these games when you talk about beating teams of this caliber. To me, that has been a big focus and will continue to be a focus. That is the next step for us as a program is to is to be able to find a way to win these types of games and elevate our program.”

On the Offensive Line Holding Up Against Penn State’s Front:

“The goal was to improve that area. The bottom line is, they have a very talented offensive line that is pretty much his wholesale back, except for one guy. They had a lot of good number twos last year, so they are one of the best in the entire country at that position. We are aware of that. Our guys have to meet that challenge head on. We talk about all the time in our program that big men lead the way, both on offense and on defensive line. That is where the game is won. They took the game over in that fourth quarter and had that long drive, had several short yardage situations, and we could not get off the field. We kept saying we just need one more stop, just one more stop, but we were not able to do that. Hats off to them as they obviously executed at a high level and controlled the line of scrimmage on that final drive, without question. That is where our guys have to… we have a lot of guys back from last year and a few more pieces to it. That experience and the guys being a year older, a year better with fundamentals, better technique, and better execution. More guys that can help us, more guys that can play at a high level, to me, is the key. They are going to get a lot of snaps in the nature of games like this. We have to rise up and get stops the run game, do a tremendous job of controlling the pass game, and that is an objective every single week. As you pointed out, statistically from last year, extremely critical against Penn State.”

Coordinator Interviews

Nick Sheridan

Kane Wommack