Penn State Football
Indiana Head Coach Tom Allen Postgame Press Conference
vs. Indiana – October 2, 2021
Q: What happened to Michael (Penix Jr.) there and what was the prognosis?
A: Yeah, it's defiantly his shoulder, his throwing shoulder. So, we will continue to evaluate that. We have to do some tests tomorrow to find out what the key issue is.
Q: You mentioned the offense in general tonight, but from your immediate analysis, what went wrong?
A: Yeah, I mean they have a really good defense and they make it really hard to run the football and have done that consistently. We obviously got to look at the film and figure out the answers to do a better job. We got to do a better job as a staff, I have to do a better job as a head coach, and make sure we're able to take that pressure off our throwing game and stay on the field. We got to get first downs and we didn't get very many and that's just not good enough. We have to be able to do that to win games in this conference. So, to me, we got to use this bye week coming up to get guys healthy, but more importantly to get ourselves in the right mindset to be able to move the ball effectively on offense and win football games.
Q: You decided to go for it on fourth down on that early drive in the red zone and then kicked a field goal late in the game. What went into both of those decisions?
A: More the distance you know. It's fourth and one inside the ten and I've said it before and I'll say it again, you don't win road games kicking field goals in those situations and I'm going to go for that every time. Obviously, we expect to get it, but the other one was longer than that and we kind of just felt like it's a lesser percentage. We talked about it and said, "hey do you go for it here?" and in hindsight we probably should've just went for it. We wanted to get points on the board and just get some momentum, just something positive.
Q: How much of the offensive struggles is just game plan coming in versus actual execution?
A: I think execution was a big problem tonight. Obviously, I'm going to watch the film and we'll have more specific answers about moving forward. Just from what I watched and saw, we just didn't execute with things we were trying to do and things we're trying to call. It's not just on the offensive line, but it obviously starts with them, big men lead the way and they got to get the job done and they weren't good enough. We got to coach better, we got to play better, and we got to find ways to ways to take some pressure off some things we can do well.
Q: It's likely in the morning that Penn State, Iowa, and Cincinnati will be ranked No. 3, 4, and 5 in the country. That doesn't make any excuses at all, but the fact that these games have come up against that type of quality of opposition, does that expose the flaws in your team a little bit more than some random Saturday would?
A: I would think so and we saw that today. What Cincinnati did and what Iowa did last night, they're very good football teams. All I know is we played those teams and they're all really, really good. It is what it is and there are no excuses. We'll look ourselves in the mirror, we're going to get back up, and we're going to fight. I promise you that. You know, that's one positive thing about playing good football teams. There's no question that they'll expose you on what exactly you need to work on and that's how you get better. You stay together as a football team and our guys will. We have a lot of character in our locker room and a lot of guys that have invested a whole lot in this program. I believe in them, and they believe in what we're doing. Bottom line is that we have to play better. We didn't get the job done.
Q: What was your evaluation of Michael (Penix Jr.) before he was hurt and what Jack (Tuttle) did after Michael was hurt? When Michael comes back, is there a competition?
A: Jack gave us a little spark. I thought that he did a lot of good things. I don't know about that last throw though, it was just a little bit of miscommunication. I liked what I saw, and I think Jack's a really good football player. But we got to do what we got to do to put ourselves in the best position to win football games. First and foremost, we have to find up what's wrong with Michael and make sure he's health. His health is number one as is the case with all of our guys. But I liked what I saw from Jack tonight, and we just got to do what we can to help get this team get better, learn from our mistakes, and keep getting a little bit better each week.
Q: Any update on Taiwan (Mullen) and how much does that hurt not having him with Penn State having a receiver like Jahan Dotson?
A: Yeah, it's not good. He got injured last week and he went down twice in the Western Kentucky game. He tried to rehab, I thought we were going to have him and if you asked me yesterday, I would've said he was going to play. Just when we got him out there today, he just wasn't where he needed to be to feel good about him playing. I trust our medical staff on that. Not having him was a big blow. Obviously, Reese (Taylor) also went down, and we lost him for the second half. He's another one of our great players defensively. So that took a toll on that position in the secondary, but those guys battled. We got to hopefully be able to use the bye week to get those guys back and I don't see those being long term issues for those guys.
