Christopher Allen Continues to Demonstrate Improvement from 2019 Season
TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — After an Iron Bowl effort that saw two tackles for loss, two quarterback hurries, a sack and four total tackles, redshirt-junior linebacker Christopher Allen is still proving that his name belongs right beside Dylan Moses and Christian Harris when talking about Alabama’s production at the linebacker position.
Allen enters this weekend’s game at LSU as the Crimson Tide’s leader in sacks with four on the year for a loss of 22 yards, a stark improvement over last season that saw Allen only get half a sack for a three-yard loss.
Allen’s teammate, redshirt-junior defensive lineman Phidarian ‘Phil’ Mathis, said that he has noticed significant improvement from Allen this season.
“Chris Allen's been really productive this year,” Mathis said. “He's came a long way, and I'm just proud to see him blow up like this this year. Hopefully he can continue being great and we can all lead behind him and do the same thing up front.”
So far this season, Allen also leads the Crimson Tide defense with nine tackles for loss, equating to 31 negative yards for opposing offenses. Compared to last season’s numbers that saw only 4.5 tackles for loss totaling nine yards for Allen and couple that with the fact that there are still games left to be played this year, and Allen’s improvement from year to year can definitely be seen.
On Monday, Alabama head coach Nick Saban noted Allen’s increase in production, pointing to the linebacker’s maturation as the key cause of the results on the field.
“Chris has got great size; he's got power,” Saban said. “I think he's playing with a lot more confidence now. I think it was a guy that was a little unsure of times of exactly what was expected of him.
“You know, sometimes guys are like that they're afraid to pull the pin and actually do what they know they're supposed to do. And I think once players mature past that and develop the confidence that ‘This is the way I can make plays, I got to trust it, I gotta believe it, I gotta go do it, this is what the coach asked me to do, this is what I'm supposed to do in this scheme of things to be able to make plays that I think we started seeing in production’ and I think that's definitely what's happened with Chris.
“He’s had really good production all year long but both of our outside backers really have done a good job for us this year.”
With still a bit of time left in the season and with leading the Crimson Tide in both sacks and tackles for loss, it will be interesting to see what sort of final numbers Allen can put up before season's end.
