Thursday Notebook: Tom Allen previews Connecticut

Indiana head football coach Tom Allen addressed the media Thursday, as he does every week before games, and updated the status of redshirt freshman quarterback Mike Penix, as well as noted changes he'd like to see in his team when it plays Connecticut Saturday after losing big to Ohio State.

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Allen said he wasn't sure about the redshirt freshman quarterback's status or Saturday's game against Connecticut yet but is expecting to know more within the next couple days leading up to the game. He said Penix has been practicing some but not much since he is focused on rehabilitation.

Sophomore linebacker Cam Jones suffered an ankle injury towards the end fo the Ball State game and missed the Eastern Illinois game. Allen said on his radio show Wednesday that the staff thought he might be out three or four weeks, but he was only out one. He apparently rehabbed for six or more hours each day working to get back for the Ohio State game, and he accomplished that goal.

"To show and have a guy where you can say, ‘This is how it’s done.’ It also makes our guys realize the quality of trainers and doctors that we have, and if you just buy in to do everything exactly like we ask you to do – and I would say, and then some – he took the 'and then some.'"

Run fits and tackling, and offensive line scheme. Allen said his staff has really hit the run fits hard in an attempt to stop the opponent's rushing attack, which will be needed against a team that will rely on the running game this weekend. He also integrated a new tackling drill that is specific to situations in which he feels the defense has been vulnerable.

Allen also said he believes as weeks go by, the offensive line will continue to gel together as a unit, since pieces of each side of the line aren't there anymore.

"When you take out last year’s right tackle and left guard, you took away the guys that work together. Sometimes you maybe have the whole left side back or the whole right side back, but they’re all kind of new working together. I think that does take time."

Allen said the two things he believes have caused some stress in the running game are getting a poor push off the ball and not having structural answers to overloading the box. He emphasized the point that he wants to get the ball toward the perimeter in the running game moving forward.

"I want to see us getting the ball on the perimeter. That, to me, would be a big help to get the pressure off the core.”

Allen famously turned the defense over to new defensive coordinator Kane Wommack during the offseason, and the Ohio State loss was one of the weakest defensive performances since Allen arrived in Bloomington in 2016. But Allen said, while he is responsible at the end of the day as the head coach, he doesn't second-guess what Wommack calls. However, he does make adjustments.

"I don’t second-guess a call that we made. But we made some changes now and some things where I said, ‘I want to see us do this, this and this.’ I’m not calling it, but I’ve stepped in because this is what I do. It was not a whole lot of fun not being the one calling it in that kind of a situation."

"Being crisp and sharp. What that means to me is creating seams in the run game and the play action that we have off of that. The rhythm of that is what I want to see. I want the offense to have good rhythm so we feel like we can keep that defense of balance and stay out of those long-yardage situations.

Defensively, it’s stopping the run and being great finishers as tacklers. If we see that, then I’ll feel a whole lot differently than I did in the last couple days from this last experience.

And then consistency in the kicking game. I want to make sure our specialists are kicking and performing at a high level.”

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