It was one Penn State alumnus talking up another, but that doesn’t necessarily diminish the praise that Pittsburgh Steelers safety Marcus Allen was receiving from his position coach Monday.
Taking part in his third NFL training camp since being a fifth-round pick of the Steelers in 2018, could Allen finally earn a regular role with the defense?
“I think this is a big year for Marcus, and he’s taking advantage of a lot of different things,” Steelers defensive backs coach Tom Bradley said. “One thing, he’s playing a lot faster this year. You can tell he really understands the system. He’s very versatile. We can do a lot of different things with him in our package.
“Marcus is really coming on strong during this camp.”
It took until the year’s final week and the season’s final game, but Marcus Allen made his 2019 #Steelers season debut https://t.co/K17tvsmXOu
— Tribune-ReviewSports (@TribSports) January 2, 2020
The 6-foot-2, 215-pound Allen has appeared in only three regular-season games over his first two seasons, including just the Dec. 29 finale in 2019. Allen has been limited to 18 snaps on defense and 19 on special teams in that time.
On a team with an All-Pro in Minkah Fitzpatrick, a former first-round pick in Terrell Edmunds and a versatile chess piece in Cameron Sutton, Allen will have a difficult time carving out a niche on defense. But the special-teams prowess he showed between 2014-17 at Penn State could help him see the NFL field.
Though the Steelers kept Allen on their 53-man roster throughout his rookie season, he was cut at the end of last year’s training camp. Allen spent the first 15 weeks of the 2019 regular season on the practice squad before a promotion to the active roster in December.
Allen committed to Penn State in 2013, about 16 months after Bradley’s three-decade association with the school ended with him as interim head coach. Allen left college as No. 5 on the Nittany Lions’ career tackles list, suggesting an ability to be an effective “in the box” safety or a hybrid linebacker-type that is becoming increasingly popular in the modern NFL.
“They’re very valuable in football today, especially with the way different packages come in on offense,” Bradley said. “A guy who can get in the box, Marcus can play in space. He’s really developed. He’s one of the guys this preseason that has really come forward with his game. He’s playing faster. He understands what we are doing, and because of that, we’re going to be able to do a lot of different things with Marcus,”
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