{"id":71700,"date":"2025-01-14T19:34:58","date_gmt":"2025-01-15T00:34:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/?p=71700"},"modified":"2025-09-20T14:47:11","modified_gmt":"2025-09-20T18:47:11","slug":"who-is-clemsons-new-defensive-coordinator","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/2025\/01\/14\/who-is-clemsons-new-defensive-coordinator\/","title":{"rendered":"Who is Clemson\u2019s New Defensive Coordinator?"},"content":{"rendered":"

On the afternoon of Tuesday, January 14th Clemson Athletics and Dabo Swinney officially announced Tom Allen will be the new defensive Coordinator. Allen joins the Tigers following a short stint at Penn State. It was rumored<\/a> that a candidate being considered for the job was on a team still competing in the college football playoff. Therefore talks had to remain minimal and quiet during that team\u2019s run.<\/p>\n

Penn State lost to Notre Dame<\/a> in the semi-final of the playoffs on Thursday, January 9th. It did not long after for talks between Clemson and Allen to intensify. By Monday, January 13th it was reported a deal with Allen was in the works. Now that deal has been made official by the Clemson Board of Trustees. Allen is the new leader of the Tiger defense.<\/p>\n

Who is Clemson\u2019s New Defensive Coordinator?<\/h2>\n

Who is Tom Allen?<\/h3>\n

Allen joins the Clemson staff with over 30 years of coaching experience. He has coached at every level starting with high school early on in his career. Allen was the defensive coordinator at three different schools in the state of Indiana. Those schools were Armwood High School, Marion High School, and Ben Davis High School. He was also a head coach at the high school level first at Temple Heights High School. Later on, he would be promoted from his coordinator position at Ben Davis High School to its Head coach.<\/p>\n

Allen would make his move to the collegiate level in 2007 starting at Division III school Wabash College. He coached the secondary while also occupying the special teams coordinator role. His first defensive coordinator job at the college level was at the NAIA program at Lambuth University. While there Allen\u2019s defense was top 15 in the nation in scoring defense, pass defense, sacks, third down conversions, and total defense. From there Allen would move on to Drake. In his time with the Bulldogs, they were top 25 in the FCS in scoring defense, rush defense, sacks, and tackles for loss.<\/p>\n

Next Allen would spend a short time as the Arkansas State assistant head coach. That was before becoming the special teams coordinator and linebackers coach at Ole Miss for a few seasons. Allen then went to South Florida to be its defensive coordinator. During that time the Bulls ranked top 25 in multiple defensive categories including interceptions, tackles for loss, and takeaways. Allen\u2019s next move would take him back to Indiana to lead the Hoosiers’ defense.<\/p>\n

After a year as the defensive coordinator, Allen would earn the head coaching position. As Indiana\u2019s head coach, Allen won the 2020 AFCA National Coach of the Year. After the 2023 season, Allen was hired as the Penn State defensive coordinator for the 2024 season. In one season with the Nittany Lions, he helped lead them to the CFP semi-finals.<\/p>\n

What Does Allen Bring?<\/h3>\n

Allen doesn\u2019t just bring lots of experience to Death Valley. He also brings a proven track record of success in that experience. His defense at Penn State was one of the best in the country this season. It played a huge role in the team\u2019s success.<\/p>\n

The Nittany Lions ranked top 10 in the FBS in total defense, rush defense, and points per game. They also had the 5th most sacks and second most tackles for loss as a team in the country. Not to mention there will be a potential top-10 pick in the NFL Draft coming from that Lions defense in Abdul Carter<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Allen\u2019s wealth of experience and knowledge of multiple positions will improve the Tigers\u2019 defense immediately. This is a big-time hire for Swinney and his program. Clemson looks to be aggressively pursuing a National Championship run in 2025 with the offseason moves it\u2019s made already.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On the afternoon of Tuesday, January 14th Clemson Athletics and Dabo Swinney officially announced Tom Allen will be the new defensive Coordinator. Allen joins the Tigers following a short stint at Penn State. It was rumored that a candidate being considered for the job was on a team still competing in the college football playoff. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4614,"featured_media":71706,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"1","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7,35645,2,35610],"tags":[4817,36,79,680,309,1073],"class_list":["post-71700","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-acc","category-clemson-tigers","category-featured","category-penn-state-nittany-lions","tag-acc-football","tag-clemson-tigers","tag-college-football","tag-dabo-swinney","tag-penn-state-nittany-lions","tag-tom-allen"],"modified_by":"Michael Kovacs, ADMIN","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71700","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4614"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71700"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71700\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":71707,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71700\/revisions\/71707"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/71706"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71700"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71700"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71700"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}