Clemson Tigers Defensive Coordinator Excited For First Home Game With Team

Excitement may be an understatement to describe Clemson Tigers defensive coordinator Tom Allen ahead of his first game with the team.

The former Penn State defensive coordinator has never played a game in Memorial Stadium nor even watched a game in the stadium. However, he will be overseeing it all from the coaches' box, bringing that excitement to Saturday.

“I’ve never watched a game in this stadium,” Allen said to the media on Tuesday. “Never been on the opposing sideline, never coached in this stadium in the game, so that brings a lot of excitement as well.”

Allen won’t be on the sideline with head coach Dabo Swinney and the rest of the team. With all the new technology that the game now has, the defensive coordinator believes that being able to see the entire field will help him make better decisions for the Tigers.

“I think that it’s really beneficial to be able to see everything that they’re doing,” Allen said, “especially early in the season when you’re getting a lot of unknowns from a team that you study for your whole offseason, and I haven’t been able to watch them play in person this season.”

With the LSU Tigers coming to town, the small sample size that Allen has seen from the offense as a whole. While senior quarterback Garrett Nussmeier is a marquee returner, LSU will have a shuffled offensive line and new weapons at wide receiver.

The Clemson defensive coordinator likes the challenge that it presents.

“That’s part of what you do as a coach because there’s going to be the first few drives and you’re going to have a lot of adjusting going on, and that is, no doubt, the thrill of Week 1 opponents, especially this high of a level,” Allen said. “At the end of the day, we don’t really know what they’re going to do, what personnel they’re going to use.”

Against a high-powered offense that can pose trouble, Allen is all about installing confidence and belief in his players. A defense that saw trouble against the rush and tackling a season ago, the Clemson defensive coordinator has been about the unit’s mentality if the Tigers are to beat LSU on Saturday night.

From the team’s loss to Texas last December, it will be up to the 55-year-old to build back the defense at a fast rate.

“It’s been a daily objective for me to build the belief and confidence in our players, defensively,” he said. “And, obviously, the last four times our defense took the field previously, it wasn’t positive for that unit. So, to me, that can lie heavy on you, so you’ve got to be able to fundamentally, individually and collectively build that back, and it takes time.”