James Franklin hired three new coordinators in one of his busiest offseasons as the Penn State Nittany Lions' head coach.
For the first time since becoming Penn State’s head football coach, James Franklin hired three new coordinators. He filled those positions with Kansas’ Andy Kotelnicki on offense, Tom Allen, Indiana’s former head coach, on defense and Vanderbilt’s Justin Lustig on special teams. That's significant turnover for a staff looking to capitalize on an expanded playoff field after back-to-back 10-win regular seasons.
Allen, meanwhile, is long removed from acting as a coordinator or position coach, having served as Indiana’s head man since 2017. He said he’s happy to be isolated from the big-picture responsibilities head coaches carry these days, focusing instead on his bread and butter of coaching defense. The Lions will play a lot of 4-2-5 sets under Allen.
Franklin has built an incredibly strong base of assistants in Happy Valley. And while his staff experienced annual turnover, the core pillars remain in cornerbacks coach Terry Smith and running backs coach Ja’Juan Seider. With hot recruiting streaks and some NFL production, safeties coach Anthony Poindexter, tight ends coach Ty Howle and offensive line coach Phil Trautwein are alphas, too, but we’ll focus on the first two.
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