Pete Thamel: Penn State targeting former Indiana coach Tom Allen for defensive coordinator role

Penn State has zeroed in on a new defensive coordinator, according to ESPN’s Pete Thamel. He reported on Sunday that the Nittany Lions are targeting former Indiana head coach Tom Allen for the position.

Here was that report, which Thamel tweeted:

“Sources: Penn State is targeting former Indiana coach Tom Allen to be the school’s next defensive coordinator. Deal is being finalized and is expected to come together in the upcoming days.”

Allen was the head coach at Indiana for the last seven seasons but was fired in 2023. Of course, former Penn State defensive coordinator Manny Diaz just recently left to take the Duke head coaching job, which left the DC gig open.

Allen’s been in the football coaching world for over three decades now, and began a long career as an assistant at every level imaginable back in 1992 with Temple Heights High School in Florida, where he was the defensive coordinator and even the interim head coach for a couple of months. But that would be his last head coaching experience until Bloomington.

His time at Temple Heights was followed by a string of stops at other high schools in Florida and Indiana before he finally broke through into the lower-rung college programs. In 2011, Allen caught on as the associate head coach for Arkansas State and parlayed that role into a spot on the Ole Miss staff coaching special teams and the linebackers.

That was the break Tom Allen needed to get to the FBS ranks. After the stop in Oxford, Allen took his first coordinator job at the D1 level coaching the defense for South Florida. He would then move on to fill the defensive coordinator spot at Indiana and took over the head coaching job a year later, holding office for seven seasons that featured some moderate success.

All things considered, he did put together a couple of exciting seasons with a young Michael Penix at QB before ultimately falling short after he left for Washington. Now, he’ll link up with James Franklin to coach Penn State’s defense.

This move certainly worked last time around, as Franklin nabbed a recently-fired Manny Diaz to take a coordinator role he’s overqualified for. The same could be said for Allen.