My Two Cents: Tom Allen Learning Hard Way That Firing Friends Isn't Easy

Indiana coach Tom Allen had to fire his friend Darren Hiller on Sunday after his offensive line coach failed to get the job done for the past two seasons. It wasn't easy to do, which is why it probably came 10 months too late.

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. — It's not just the game of football, it's the life of football. When people talk about ''football family,'' it's exactly that.

Family.

Tom Allen is a football lifer, without question. He's a coach's son, a native Hoosier, and he's been patrolling football sidelines for 30 years now at every level imaginable. The Indiana football coach is a God-fearing family man who loves his wife, loves his kids, loves his family and also dearly loves his closest friends.

Many of those friends have coached with him, both alongside Allen at other schools and now on his staff at Indiana since he became the head coach in late 2016. Relationships mean a lot to Tom Allen, they always have and they always will. 

And when things go bad, no one hurts worse that Tom Allen. He's been learning that the hard way in the past year-and-change.

On Sunday, after another absolutely abysmal performance by Indiana's offensive line in a 31-10 loss to No. 4 Michigan, Allen put an end to this common theme over the past two seasons. He fired offensive line coach Darren Hiller on Sunday after the Hoosiers lost their third straight game to fall to 3-3 on the season.

Hiller coached with Allen for five-plus years, and they've known each other for double that. They are close, their wives are close, the families close.

He fired his friend on Sunday, too.

It was not easy, but absolutely necessary. There is no question that the biggest reason why Indiana has gone from 14-5 in the 2019-20 seasons to 5-13 the past year or so is because of the failures of the offensive line. That's Darren Hiller's offensive line. 

There are accepted standards at Indiana, Tom Allen has said, and Darren Hiller hasn't met them.

But he also didn't meet them last year in the epic collapse that was a gawd-awful 2-10 season. Sure, there were injuries and all that, but the play of the offensive line was terrible. They lost the battle of the trenches basically every week.

"You have a performance-based assessment for our position groups. That's what we tell our coaches,'' Allen said on Monday. "There's accountability for the way they perform. To me it wasn't meeting the standard we have to have to be able to be successful on game day in this conference.

''When that doesn't happen and you don't get the results you want, then you make a change, and that's what we've done.''

Allen could have said the same exact thing last December. He fired offensive coordinator Nick Sheridan the day after the season ended for the flaws in the offense. Indiana's offense fell off the cliff last year, and Sheridan turned out to be the scapegoat.

But last December, everyone wondered why Hiller didn't get shown the door, too. The line play had a lot to do with that disaster. Most everyone who follows this program closely was stunned that Hiller survived.

There's no doubt in my mind that Allen's friendship with Hiller played into the equation to keep him on for 2023. And that was a bad call on Allen's part. 

What happened on Sunday should have happened last December. Sure, it was hard, and it would have been hard in December, too. Indiana probably would be better off today if that happened.

Still, it was an emotional day.

"I told the offensive line in person on Sunday afternoon, early afternoon, because I wanted to tell them face to face,'' Allen said. "Yeah, there was a lot of emotions. They love Coach Hiller. I love Coach Hiller. Relationships with people matter. People matter. It's families. I know everybody just throws stuff around, says things. I get that, understand that's probably what we do. But there's people below this.

"Our players were emotional. There are connections. They took it personal in a good way. You know what, they know it's about accountability, those guys stepping up, challenging them to be able to rise up as a group, to be able to play for each other. To me it's accountability of the whole offense, it's the whole team that embraces who we are and what we're all about and the standards we have, the people we have as part of the staff.''

Allen "felt like a change was necessary,'' even a bit too late. He has the luxury of having Rod Carey on this staff, and he's sliding in to take over the offensive line. As a former Indiana offensive lineman who played the game at a high level for Bill Mallory at Indiana and has had success as a coach since then, it's a good fit.

He's ''not a miracle worker,'' Carey said on Monday, but he's also a fresh voice, with fresh ideas. Maybe he can make them better. We'll see. Give him time, though, because he'll need it.  

"The decision has been made, and Coach Carey is now in that role and we're going to move forward,'' Allen said. "The expectation is those guys to play the standard that we have to play at to win Big Ten football games. That's what the objective is. That's the expectation. I am for excited for Coach Carey to be in this role.''

I think much of Hoosier Nation feels the same way. For many years, the best part of Indiana's football team has been its offensive line. That is an undeniable fact. Wes Martin, Dan Feeney, Simon Stepaniak, Harry Crider, Coy Cronk, Brandon Knight and Hunter Littlejohn all played at a high level in the Big Ten, and many remain very good pros in the NFL today.

But when you look at the current group of Indiana linemen, only Matthew Bedford has graded out well the past couple of years, and even he will admit that he was a better player in 2020 than he was in 2021.

And therein lies the rub with Darren Hiller's time at Indiana. In the early going, he recruited well, but players never got better at Indiana. No one on the offensive line has matured into great Big Ten players. None of them. Player development is critical at a place like Indiana, where recruiting four-star and five-star athletes is downright impossible. 

What's worked in the past was turning those three-star guys into fours, and so on. Bedford, for instance, came to Indiana with promise and ability, but he played at 260 pounds in high school. Much of the credit for him becoming a quality Big Ten lineman really needs to go to the strength guys, first David Ballou and now Aaron Wellman. They got him to 300 pounds, with a body that could handle the wars. Losing him in the first game this season to an ACL injury certainly hurt.

But there are no others like him. When you look at this offensive line now, do you see even one future pro? Nope, me neither. Player development in that group has been horrible.

For Indiana to do things right, they need to start up front. They have to be able to hold their own there. Indiana has been able to find enough playmakers through the years, but the staple was being able to block for the run and protect quarterbacks. That's gone away in the past two years.

And that's on Darren Hiller, which is why he was fired on Sunday. Part of it is on Tom Allen too, for waiting too long. 

Now the rebuild up there begins. Rod Carey gets the first crack at it, but Indiana also needs to rethink what they do with that group in the offseason. They simply need better players with more talent. Recruiting three kids who barely rank in the top 1,000 on some recruiting lists doesn't solve the problem.

It's modern day college football, so maybe the best NIL situation for Indiana is a good fund for the big fellas up front. It's easier to blame the coordinators for lack of imagination, but let's be real. Nick Sheridan last year and Walt Bell this year, they are drawing up plays with one hand tied behind their backs.

Indiana's offensive line is a mess. Firing Hiller was a much needed step, as hard as it was for Tom Allen to do. It also came 10 months too late, but there's nothing we can do about it now.

It broke Allen's heart to fire Sheridan, because he loved Nick as a person, loved his wife and kids. That's Tom Allen. He couldn't pull the trigger on the Hiller firing at the same time, probably because it was too hard to do to a dear friend.

Tom Allen is learning things the hard way. All those accolades from 2019 and 2020, they are a distant memory now. Tom Allen hasn't forgotten how to coach, hasn't forgotten how to motivate. 

What he did forget was that he needed the best possible coaches — and the best recruiters — on his staff, not his best friends. 

That changed on Sunday, and it's a good thing. It's a step in the right direction, the first small step of many.

It's hard, but it had to be done. Too late? Sure. But it was the right choice for Sunday, and Allen deserves praise for doing it.

Related stories on Darren Hiller firing

• CAREY 'NOT A MIRACLE WORKER': Rod Carey knows fixing the offensive line will be challenging with six weeks left in the regular season, but he's going to try. CLICK HERE
• DARREN HILLER FIRED: Indiana football coach Tom Allen announced that Darren Hiller is out as the team's offensive line coach following a 31-10 loss to Michigan. CLICK HERE
• ROD CAREY TO REPLACE DARREN HILLER: Rod Carey will replace Darren Hiller as the offensive line coach for Indiana football. Carey played at Indiana from 1990-93 before becoming head coach at Northern Illinois and Temple. CLICK HERE
• O-LINE RECRUITS REAFFIRM COMMITMENT: Following the firing of Indiana offensive line coach Darren Hiller on Sunday, Indiana's three offensive line recruits in the class of 2023 reaffirmed their commitment to Indiana football. CLICK HERE