Allen hopes his youth will serve him well in NFL
INDIANAPOLIS – “He’s only 20” doesn’t have the same ring as previous iterations of the meme, but it’s no less applicable.
Wisconsin fans have grown used to the recurring fixation by gameday announcers accentuating how young star running back Braelon Allen was. He reclassified as a high-school junior at Fond du Lac High School and immediately made an impact as a 17-year-old freshman at UW. He was only 17. Then he was only 18. Then only 19.
Now little more than a month past his 20th birthday, he’s the youngest running back prospect at the 2024 NFL scouting combine, six months younger than second place on the list.
“I haven’t just been like, you know, I’m 20 years old,” Allen said Friday of his discussions with NFL personnel. “I think most of them know that and they take that into consideration. Of course, I think it helps me. You want someone who’s still a little more fresh, has some development that can be made still. It’s definitely an advantage.”
For a position group that has come under the microscope in recent years for its decreasing market value, his youth will matter, and so will his size. The two merged in a social-media post Thursday, when Allen commented that he was only 17 in a photo showing him “lookin’ like The Hulk” while lifting weights at UW. That garnered responses from other Wisconsin pro-athlete celebrities like J.J. Watt and Christian Yelich, who posted their considerably less-impressive selves at age 17. Allen got a kick out of all of it.
“I have a long way to go to develop,” he said. “In the right system at the right place, I could be a great player.”
It doesn’t hurt having a four-time Pro Bowl running back in his corner.
Allen met Tennessee Titans star Derrick Henry through Instagram when Allen was a freshman at UW. Allen posted a photo of himself with a Henry shirt, and the former Alabama Heisman Trophy winner reached out in a direct message, sparking a friendship.
“This past summer, I was able to pick his brain a little bit and emulate his diet, his recovery routine and his regimen,” Allen said. “Derrick’s a guy I talk to all the time, and he’s been great for me, especially this past year. I study him a lot and try to emulate his game.”
Allen is roughly the same size as Henry. Allen was listed at 6-2 and 245 pounds on the 2023 Badgers roster.
It also helps that, under new head coach Luke Fickell, Allen was given greater responsibility catching passes and pass blocking, the latter he said he perfected with help from Badgers running backs coach Devon Spalding.
“It was obviously very different than what people are used to seeing at Wisconsin,” Allen said. “Overall, I think it helped me. It helped my stock. Teams saw I could catch the ball. I had to pass protect a lot more, and those are two things NFL teams look for in a back, especially a guy that’s my size and is seen as more of a bruising back. I wanted to put different things on tape, so I think it helped me that way, for sure.”
Allen committed to UW as a safety in his sophomore season at Fond du Lac. But when his final season of high-school football was relocated to the spring, he took on the role of running back, too.
“We were kind of on the fence whether I was going to play safety or linebacker,” Allen said. “I wanted to make sure that the coaches got my film from the spring season and decide off that. That was my first time playing running back, really. So there was a month between my last high school game and when I got on campus. Two weeks before I got there, coach (Paul) Chryst called me and told me I was going to play running back.”
There was also the abrupt departure of Chryst, fired early in the 2022 season and replaced on an interim basis by Jim Leonhard, now a defensive coach with the Denver Broncos.
“One of the best football minds that I’ve ever been around,” Allen said. “The best defensive coordinator in college when he was there. A players’ coach. When Coach Chryst got fired and he took over as interim coach, every single person on that team was playing for coach Leonhard to get that job. Obviously he didn’t, but we did everything we could. I think every single player wanted him to get the job. If it wasn’t coach Chryst, we wanted it to be coach Leonhard.”
Perhaps Allen will have a chance to work with Leonhard again with the Broncos. Or hey, what about the Packers, a team that happens to head into the 2024 draft with some potential need at running back?