Austin Allen announces retirement from football

“Every morning you wake up looking for a message and it’s not there. I don’t want to delay the start of my life anymore than I have to. It honestly felt like 400 pounds was lifted off my shoulders when I called my agent to say I’m hanging up the cleats.”
After two years of professional football, including stints in both the NFL and UFL, former Aurora Husky and Nebraska Husker Austin Allen has decided to retire, a decision he shared with the News-Register last week.
Oz looked great. He was smiling as if he had won the lottery. It was a bittersweet decision, sure, but one he had zero regrets about.
A standout three-sport athlete for Aurora, Allen committed to play football for the Nebraska Huskers, starting with the 2017 fall season. He was regarded as the consensus top prospect in the state of Nebraska in the 2017 recruiting class.
It was his junior year for the Huskies that Oz became a household name, hauling in 41 passes for 507 yards and eight touchdowns, helping Aurora to a 12-1 record and a Class B runner-up finish in 2015. Oz also made 51 tackles, including five tackles for loss and had five interceptions from his linebacker position.
Aurora has been and will always be home to Oz. He loves pulling into town every time he comes back and finding at least one person, usually many more than that, to catch up with.
“Over the years, there’s been a lot of support, a lot of love for the game and competing, whatever it was,” Allen said. “I had a great support system that led me to the opportunities to play in the NFL or the UFL and even Division I athletics.”
Oz played in all 12 games for the Huskers as a redshirt freshman in 2018 before getting his first offensive start at tight end in 2019.
During the COVID season of 2020, he started seven of the eight games the Huskers played, with 18 receptions and 236 receiving yards and at least one catch in each game.
The 2021 season was a standout one for Oz, becoming a team captain for the Huskers and winning the Big Ten tight end of the year award.
Oz caught 38 passes for 602 yards, the most season receptions and season receiving yards by a tight end in Nebraska history. Allen ranked second on the team in receptions, receiving yards and receiving yards per game.
Despite having one more year of college eligibility, Allen decided to enter the 2022 NFL Draft.
Oz went through the NFL combine in the winter and Nebraska pro day in workouts for NFL teams.
He eventually went undrafted and was a free agent signing with the New York Giants as his first pro football stop.
“Over the last couple of years, it’s made me realize how much the game of football is a business,” Allen continued. “There’s good in that business and there’s bad. Sometimes you’re on the wrong side of things. I know there are tough decisions made when it comes down to you and another player. A lot of times you’re on the bad end of those decisions. You hope and wait for the next situation to come and it just doesn’t come.”
Allen was unable to make the initial 53-man roster for the Giants, but signed to their practice squad.
He was there for several weeks before eventually getting cut during the season. He eventually signed with Green Bay late in the year for the Packers’ practice squad and continued with the organization through training camp in 2023.
Allen noted the difficulty of being a practice squad player, continually looking over your shoulder and wondering if any given day it could all be taken away in an instant.
“Whatever team you’re on, always looking over your shoulder and counting the numbers of how many tight ends they have or how many they’re bringing in to work out,” Allen shared. “There’s a roller coaster of emotions as I made it through another week or waiting on the next cut. That weight on me a lot.”
Allen signed onto the Green Bay practice squad to start the 2023 NFL season and was there for about a month before he was again cut from the roster.
He had a couple of team workouts after that, but finished the season without a job.
That’s when he got a call in the winter from the Arlington Renegades, a team in the United Football League to play spring football.
The UFL was a first-year effort in a combination of the XFL and the USFL. He played in all 10 games for the Renegades, catching two passes for 19 yards as a primary blocking tight end for Bob Stoops’ team.
After that season concluded in June, Oz waited once more for the phone to ring, but nothing. That was it.
“The weight of that waiting over the last couple years, the six months of waiting for the call that never comes tears at the love (of the game) that’s built up over a lot of years,” Allen said. “Now I can put some direction and path into my life. For the last three years, I couldn’t tell you what my plans were tomorrow because I might get a call.”
What’s next for the 6-8 giant from A-Town? He’s not 100 percent sure as of yet, but Oz is actually excited to start planning some aspects of his life out.
“I’ve had a lot of job opportunities here that people have verbally told me if I need a job, I have that type of thing, which is a testament to the people in Nebraska and the support I’ve had here,” Allen said. “I have a girlfriend in Wisconsin I met when I was with the Packers and so I may end up there. I’m going to be back around here as much as I can, though.”
In the coming weeks, the News-Register will feature a three-part series on Austin Allen, called “The Legend of Oz.” You’re not going to want to miss it.
It’s BigRich driven and Oz approved.
Salute to the big guy.
RICHARD RHODEN can be reached at [email protected].