Spring Practice Report 4/7/21 – Tom Allen - Indiana University Athletics

Below is a partial transcription of a Zoom press conference with Indiana head football coach Tom Allen on Wednesday, April 7.

Indiana Head Coach Tom Allen
Q. On Pro Day...
ALLEN: We had all teams represented, which was awesome. Just a really, really great day for our guys. I thought they came in well prepared. The way you perform in that moment, there's so much that goes into it. I think that people sometimes don't quite get how much stress those guys feel on that day to perform and the jumps and the lifts. When you think about each of the guys areas, the bench press and working through the different events that we had. I know that Harry (Crider) did a good job. He had 31 reps, just showing strength. We kind of had a consistent reputation of that. And Simon (Stepaniak) did such a great job with his. All the way back with all of our guys and our interior lineman guys especially. I wasn't surprised by that at all. I know they wanted to get a few more, they all do. And Jovan Swann, with 34, maybe more than some might've thought. Just thought our guys did a great job. Even some of our skill guys, too. Stevie (Scott III) is a big, strong guy and he showed that as well. Even Jamar (Johnson) showed. And Whop (Philyor). Whop's not a big guy, but even a couple scouts commented to me about his fitness was different than they anticipated. You got to think, they haven't seen our guys. Just when you think about recruiting, we haven't seen a lot of the guys we're trying to evaluate right now. Well, they haven't had the chance to see our guys develop. That's the case for everybody, but in-person. I thought that was great. The jumps, it's always a positive thing to show explosive power. Jamar had a great vertical, 35 inches. I think the guys there showed. Another one, Jovan showed that he's more explosive than maybe they had thought as well. And then the 40 times. Everybody makes such a big deal about the 40 times and it's big and I understand all that. But there's a football speed that a lot of our guys, we don't have a guy that just sticks out with a high-end burner guy with a 40-time in this group. And they're football players. You talk to the scouts and they look so much quicker when they were doing their drill work. They feel like their 40-time didn't even reflect that. Which to me, it's called football speed. And that's a critical thing that our guys have. The ability to react quickly and make plays in space, create space for yourself offensively.

Stevie is a big back and he's lean. I thought he looked great physically. You can see how hard he worked. They all did. I thought they all looked really good and gained some good, lean muscle mass between the season until now. But I thought they showed that, and they go into the different things, the short shuttle and the L-drills and the different things that they did. You can train for those and you can prepare for those, but you put the film in and do those things show up on the football field and in the drill work? I thought the guys did a really good job of that and Whop did a great job running routes. Jamar did a great job breaking up the ball and our interior linemen did a great job, fundamentally, with all the things that they were doing. As a collective group, those guys did a lot of good things and they helped their stock for sure. And being able to show who they are, they handled that high-pressure day. We had three of those guys that got invited to the Combine even though they're not having one physically to go there and perform. I think it was really, really critical they had a chance to do that. Good day for our guys and great way to showcase a small group but a very talented group of guys. The important thing I share with the scouts is that these guys came here, and they believed in the vision for what we could become at Indiana. They helped create that vision on the field, so it's a really special group of guys.

Q. On Deland McCullough's leadership with Sampson James...
ALLEN: There's no question it always takes a little amount of time when you got somebody new that you're being coached by. But I think his personality lends itself for that to happen pretty quickly. I think also his expertise and where he's coming from helps speed up that process because there's just instant credibility for what he's telling you because of where he spent the past three years. I know Sampson really, really well and we're close and we talk a lot. I know how excited he is to have Deland McCullough as his coach. I know how much he's responding to him and I feel very, very strongly that he can help Sampson just continue to elevate and take the next step that we've challenged him. We saw the glimpse of what Sampson can be the way he played against Purdue in the 2019 Bucket Game. I'm used to saying, "that's the Sampson James that I know you can be in a Big Ten game" and that's about getting healthy and keeping healthy and getting developed at a high level. I really do feel like Coach McCullough is a great fit for that. They have a good, strong relationship being built and I think that's only going to continue to grow throughout time. Deland's got a tremendous ability to relate to our guys. A very commanding personality. He's quiet in his approach in regard to not a yeller and a screamer. He's a teacher and he's a great teacher, and he commands respect of the room. He has a lot of respect for his guys and that respect is returned. I just think that he's a relationships guy just like myself and he's built those relationships each and every day.

Q. On Chris Beaty…
ALLEN: The words you used at the end there are the words that I think of when I think of Chris. He loved Indiana. He loved Indiana Football. He loved people. He was a very caring, passionate person towards the things that he valued in his life. That was a big emphasis on others. He was so selfless. I have said it before and I will say it again, he lived out LEO as a person. I did not know him prior to coming to coach here, even though I coached against him when he played at Cathedral and I was an assistant at Ben Davis. I coached against him on the field and did not even know him. Once I came here, everyone that I talked to was consistent … he really reached out to me in the beginning. He came down here, we met face-to-face, and we had some really great times together. It was very obvious from the very beginning his love and passion for Indiana Football. When I became the head coach, that continued. His support was unwavering. He is a special person to the program and to the University. I wanted to honor him with an award named after him. He came here as a walk-on, earned his opportunity here, earned his respect, and continued to grow as he graduated from Indiana and then became an unbelievable supporter of our program from Indianapolis and everything he did for that community. I do not ever want him to be forgotten and that is special for us. I talked to his family and I know that it meant a lot to his family as well. He is a special, special person that we always want to honor.

Q. On the importance of this spring…
ALLEN: I believe so and we have approached it that way. The staff just got done meeting and talking about the next four months. What does the rest of April, May, June, and July look like? It will define what this team becomes. You think about all the time you spend together during spring practices, all the work, all the drills, and they have to take those things and apply them when we cannot work with them. Our strength staff will be with them a lot and we can be with them some. As the team develops, as the team grows, as the leadership component gets put into hyperdrive, we will have workouts that are senior led. The guys will have to take ownership of that part of it during these different periods. Player-led practices that you can do over the summer when coaches cannot be there, basically, as the rules go, the coaches cannot be there. We follow whatever those rules are. It is a good thing because it allows the players to own and personalize all of the things that we are doing. We have strong leadership on this team and we need to see that leadership continue to grow and develop. I agree, I think these next few months are going to be huge. These last couple weeks have been really big. The eight weeks prior to that were massive with our team because of all that we did not get to do with them in the weight room with our strength staff, so that has to continue. We talk about the cumulative effect of our physical and mental preparation, which ultimately leads to the cumulative effect of our physical and mental toughness throughout a game. We are building that right now. We will be building that through the next several months. It is a critical time for us and we have to maximize it. The 2021 football team will be indicative of how well we maximize this current time.

Indiana University Athletics

Spring Practice Report 4/7/21 – Tom Allen

Players Mentioned

Jovan Swann

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