Georgia State University Athletics

Allen Smith joined the Georgia State staff as defensive line coach in 2022 after one season in the National Football League as assistant defensive line coach for the Houston Texans.
 
Before his NFL stint, he spent three years as defensive line coach at Wofford, helping the Terriers to back-to-back berths in the NCAA FCS playoffs in 2018 and 2019.
 
In both of those seasons, Smith helped coach the top defense in the Southern Conference. In 2018, the Terriers led the conference in rushing defense, total defense and scoring defense, ranking No. 12 or higher in FCS in all three categories.
 
The following year, Wofford again led the league in total defense as well as sacks, while ranking second in rushing and scoring defense.
 
Smith developed and coached All-America and All-Southern Conference nose tackle Miles Brown, who signed a free agent contract with the Arizona Cardinals and appeared in nine games in 2019 and then spent time on the Tennessee Titans practice squad in 2020.
 
Smith served one season as the defensive line coach at VMI (2017) and one season at Duke as a defensive operations assistant (2016). In 2015, as a defensive graduate assistant at Appalachian State, he worked with Sun Belt Conference Defensive Player of the Year Ronald Blair, who was a fifth-round draft pick by the San Francisco 49ers in 2016.
 
He began his coaching career as an assistant coach at Calhoun County High School in 2014.
 
As a player, Smith was a standout defensive lineman at Wofford who helped the Terriers to four straight NCAA FCS playoff berths, including SoCon titles in 2010 and 2012. He served as team captain as a senior.
 
Smith earned his bachelor's degree in business economics from Wofford in 2012. He and his wife Joy have one daughter, Harleigh, born in 2020.