Allen Impressed on Sunny Second Day of Spring Ball
3/5/2017 6:25:00 PM | Football
By: Ben Segelbaum, IUHoosiers.com
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. – With the sun beating down on the practice fields just north of Memorial Stadium, the Indiana football team held its second practice of the spring.
Although they are still practicing with helmets only or "cloth" as Hoosiers head coach Tom Allen calls it, IU impressed their first-year head coach on the field.
"I thought practice was very productive with re-establishing our expectations for our defense in terms of how we are going to practice, create takeaways and playing with fanatical effort," Allen said. "I thought that was excellent today. Offensively, putting in some new concepts with obviously a whole new system. Our specialists did good things, kicked the ball well. Beautiful weather, couldn't ask for anything more."
Those aforementioned new concepts that the offense will be implementing in the upcoming months comes with the territory of having all new coaches on that side of the ball.
"It's a whole crew now, so it's definitely different," Allen said. "I think they're meshing really well. A lot of really good people in that room. Which is not surprising when you get a lot of good guys that know a lot of football and don't have big egos, it just works out well. They just work together, focus on what they're doing, have a common goal for us to be a top five offense in the Big Ten and a top 25 offense in the country. They're on a mission for that."
On the defensive side of the ball, the middle linebacker spot remains open after Marcus Oliver's departure. Before declaring for the draft, Oliver played 36 career games and made 25 starts.
"(Junior) Chris Covington is in the mix for sure and doing a great job," Allen said. "For me, it's really two things. Number one, keeping him healthy and two, being able to run the defense and run it with confidence. We have several guys in the mix for that spot, but he's definitely the guy returning who has the most experience and has a great shot to be the guy."
Having experience at most positons has already helped immensely for the Hoosiers as they can get off to a quicker start than 2016, Allen's first in Bloomington as defensive coordinator.
"It's completely different than a year ago," Allen said. "Before I felt like I had to always set the tone for everything. Now there's players doing it, there's other coaches doing it. The standards have been set, the expectations have been set. They're not satisfied. We had a good year last defensively, but we want to have a great defense."
The leadership, and especially carrying the load at the linebacker position, begins with senior Tegray Scales, a 2016 All-American and last season's team most valuable player.
"He's a completely different person in terms of his confidence and his ability to lead," Allen said. "I stood back during sessions and watched to see how he takes things over. That's what you want to see."
When Allen looks out on the field, true freshman Thomas Allen isn't on the sidelines any more watching his dad coach, the younger Allen is now getting coached by his dad.
"It's different to see your son out there. He jokingly said 'watching us run all those gassers was a lot more enjoyable than actually running them.' It's a new opportunity and we are blessed to be together."
