Yet in his second stint on the Mountaineer coaching staff, West Virginia’s well-traveled first-year quarterbacks coach has made it known going above and beyond is the expectation for the signal-callers with which he has at his disposal in the upcoming 2024 season.
“You have to be in the building all day. That’s part of what being a quarterback is, and you have to study so much film to know what they’re going to do,” Allen said. “You have to understand it so much and be here so much that there’s no drop off.”
While that comes from part of his message to second-string quarterback Nicco Marchiol, it applies to all players at a position Allen himself has extensive experience at. He was named the 4A Mississippi Offensive Player of the Year in 2013 and went on to play at Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College.
But a major elbow injury brought an abrupt end to Allen’s days as a quarterback and led him to a profession he says he had in mind for a long time.
“Back in high school, I liked helping younger people when it came to developing at sports,” Allen said. “I was a junior in high school, and one of my little brother’s friends moms asked me to come help coach their soccer team. Anything like that, I enjoy doing, teaching the game. I’ve known for a long time I wanted to coach. Playing in junior college, I tore up my elbow and there was a decision to get surgery or start coaching.”
Allen settled on the latter and began his journey as a student assistant at LSU, essentially filling the role of a graduate assistant that worked with quarterbacks, only he did so without having graduated yet.