What Tom Allen Said After Indiana's 33-24 Loss At Penn State
Indiana lost 33-24 Saturday at No. 10 Penn State, dropping the Hoosiers' record to 2-6 on the season.
Here's everything Indiana coach Tom Allen said after the game.
Opening statement
Allen: "Just a very disappointed locker room. Guys are hurting, they player their hearts out and did a lot of great things on offense, defense. Gave up a couple returns that were costly. Obviously the dropped punt hurt us and gave them points, but just proud of our team. Proud of their fight, proud of the way they came out started the game and continued to battle. Offense is getting better, o-line continues to play better and throwing the ball better, stop the run better. Just got to win those critical situations last few minutes of the game when it's all tied up. Got to find a way to finish. I'm proud of this team, just got to keep working."
On if he feels Indiana gifted Penn State the game with self-inflicted mistakes...
Allen: "Yeah, I definitely feel like we hurt ourselves without question. You just can't, you know, gotta catch punts. Work on that all the time, and so that's costly, for sure. And just a couple of the self-inflicted wounds early I thought hurt us, put us behind the chains a little bit, you know, throwing the pick that was hard for us. And so but yeah, there's no question we played good enough to win the game. Just didn't finish it the way we want the last three minutes inside of three minutes. So it makes it even harder, makes it hurt more, tougher, but, you know, played a really good team like this on the road and out kids, they battled, they fought. Very, very proud of those guys in that locker room, man. They're coming together. They stayed together, and they came here to win the game."
On play-calling strategy with five minutes left, prior to kicking game-tying field goal...
Allen: "After the first couple, if you look, if you watch the game, we had actually done that to kind of set some things up. You know, we're running the ball really, really well. And then when we get to third down, we talked real quick and said, 'Hey, we're in field goal range. Don't risk a takeaway.' They're really good at taking the ball away. They're a great pressure team on 3rd and 6. And we felt, you know, we're already in field goal range. It was just we thought the smart thing to do to not put ourselves in a position to give away those points and lose the game that way. So that was the thought process. There was an agreement that I had, I actually agree with that decision to do that. Once we get third down, now obviously we'd like to be able to get to where we get the touchdown. I said, 'Guys, let's go score a touchdown.' You know, the whole goal was to score a touchdown in that situation. Didn't want to leave it to overtime or a tie game or whatever. But once we get the third long, you know just their defense is really, really good on third downs and and obviously you saw there they got a lot of good pass rushers a lot of NFL type defensive linemen that can really be challenging for your offensive line and your pressures on you. So that was the thought process."
On if Brendan Sorsby was injured before the drive where Indiana kicked the game-tying field goal...
Allen: "No, we wouldn't have put him out there if we didn't think – we had Tayven warm up. You know, he got hit in the shoulder on that touchdown through to Omar Cooper and they checked him out and he threw a little bit. He was sore for sure, but he was good enough to throw. So it wasn't because of his shoulder. If he couldn't throw, we would have put Tayven in."
On whose decision it was to kick the field goal...
Allen: "Once we got to third down, we were like, we didn't want to put ourselves in a position to not get points. We were already in field goal range. [Rod Carey] said it, and I agree with it. I usually don't tell him what to call, but if I don't agree with something I would say, 'No, I don't want to do that, let's do this,' but I agreed with him. Because you play so hard, you get a chance to tie the game up, we had fought back to get to that point. So I think you got to be – that's why we punted when it was 4th and 1, you know, you could go for that obviously, when you're down by three, but you know what, got a monster punt, they fair caught it and you get the ball. So to me, when you're a three point game, you're just trying to find a way to win the game."
On fixing special teams mistakes...
Allen: "Yeah, you know like for instance, dropped the punt so we made a switch, you know, so the guy that dropped the punt, we just got to catch punts. We had a couple penalties that can't happen. You noticed once they got the return, the long return we just sky kicked the rest of them and so it was that was effective for us. So we just got to continue to – they have dangerous, dangerous return guys, you know, those in the punt game and the return game. So I was concerned about that already before the game started, so proved to be true. I mean, they've always had that, you know. They've really good athletes in space, so we got to continue to work on that and find every advantage we can have to find a way to win and finish that game."
On if the defense was worn down...
Allen: "No, that's what you do. So to me, some of those were the defenses fault and not getting off the field. Another one was the muffed punt, which hurts you. So it's not hang your head, we just say we don't care what the situation is. We go out there, and our job is to stop their offense. Obviously we scored on two explosive plays, now the negative to that is, you don't run any plays and the defense is back out there. We got seven points on those two long pass plays in the first half. I think we had 22 snaps of offense, and the big part of that is because we scored so fast. So that's the negative of that, but obviously all take the score over the pressure it puts on our defense. But I thought the second half kind of balanced back out, the third quarter especially. But you're right those plays add up. I was worried about the turnaround, and that halftime sequence kind of felt like last week, where because of not getting off the field on third down and then the muffed punt puts you in a bad position to stay on the field longer than you should have been, so I do agree with that part of it. But from a mindset perspective, no, you've got to go get a stop. If you get three and outs, that's your job defensively. Get a takeaway, get a three and out to keep us from having to stay out there. But that's why we rotate a lot of those guys, playing more guys, we played more linebackers today, which I thought was good. We played a lot of d-linemen, played more DBs, Jordan Shaw got a chance to play. He's a talented player. He proved to me he's deserves to be out there more. With Noah being down we got to find ways to get some other guys to step up. So yeah, we're just proud of our defense. They gotta be tough and expect to go out no matter what happens and get a stop."
On if he sensed that his players would come out strong like they did Saturday despite the recent losses...
Allen: "I believe in them and I continue to motivate them. My Sundays have been really critical. I feel like with our guys, we actually changed their schedule. The year before we had Sunday off and Monday was our was our day with our team and I knew we had so many new players that I wanted to be with the team the day after the game. This is before the season started. We set this, we changed the schedule, and I'm really thankful that we did because we need that time together to keep the team together because it's easy to get discouraged. But man, they came out and they responded the way I expected them to. And we talked about you know even the word for this week and what it means and those words are powerful because these are words that the players pick, you know, I use something from them, and I go through and I do my research on where to find out how to motivate these guys to be internally and intrinsically you know, passionate about fighting because that's what life's about. Life is hard sometimes, and it's sometimes it's really not fair. So, you know, I really tried to make it real life to them, but also how do I find ways to motivate them to just keep battling and yeah, that's easier said than done. You know, as the season wears on, you have some losses that mount on you a little bit and can get discouraging, you know, but I can't let these guys get discouraged. I can't let them doubt themselves. I can't let them you know, fall into that trap. So we have ways of doing that we build up that way as a part of our culture. But you know what, we've got to play better. We've got to execute at a high level. We don't have a lot of margin for error against a team like this, but I was proud of our guys. They responded. And that's why that means a lot to me that that shows me a lot about the guys in that room. The way they battle. It wasn't just like this for a quarter, you know, they played their tails off the whole game. And we've got to find a way to make a play on each side of the ball at the end of the game. So we're gonna continue to invest in them in their minds and their hearts to get them to keep believing, keep battling. And we're now in playoff mode. So we know we got to do."
On building off the way they finished drives...
Allen: "There absolutely is. I'm gonna choose to approach it that way. And there's no question, I do think it starts up front offensively, we did run the football more effectively and that takes pressure off your quarterback, takes pressure off the throw game and keeps you out of those 3rd and 7-plus situations, those are hard against really good teams especially. So there's no doubt we're gonna build off of that. But at the end of the day, we've got to win and that's the whole objective and the whole goal when we came on his trip. We came here to beat Penn State even though we've never won here before. I don't really care about that. We were gonna try make history today. And we came really really close, but yeah, we're gonna build off things that we did well, and we gotta keep finishing and finding ways to score more points. We got continue to find ways to to create more takeaways because those takeaways give us points. We did a good job pressuring the quarterback and got to continue to do that in my opinion, and go to keep building off those things and got to get more guys to step up these last four weeks so we can finish the way we want to finish. I appreciate you guys. Have a great day. LEO."
