Ja’Juan Seider explains ‘never easy’ decision to leave Penn State football

It’s been two weeks since running backs coach Ja’Juan Seider left Happy Valley for South Bend. The second longest-tenured assistant on the Penn State football staff, the decision to leave the Nittany Lions wasn’t one that Seider took lightly.

“It was never easy,” Seider said on Wednesday in his first media appearance since arriving at Notre Dame. “You’ve been at a place seven years. The type of room that we have built at Penn State, the culture with those kids, it’s time, right? There’s never the right time, you know, never the bad time. Sometimes, you’re at the back end where you don’t have any control of it and the staff gets let go and you got to leave. And you’re on a staff where you win and you don’t have to leave.

“But we talked about it, me and the family. It was just like, you say ‘no’ every year. You don’t want to also be complacent either. It was just — it was Notre Dame. It was Marcus Freeman. We built a relationship 14 years ago when we were young coaches in this profession through Gerad Parker, who used to be here. Just went to Purdue, and we were on the road together. We kind of hit it off. It’s almost like, I’m telling my wife sometimes, like talking to myself. I talk to him, I’m talking to myself. And we just stayed in touch. We just stayed in touch.”

Seider to Singleton, Allen: Do not come back to Penn State football for me

Penn State running backs Nicholas Singleton and Kaytron Allen. © Nathan Ray Seebeck-Imagn Images

Seider was fresh off arguably his best year while on the Penn State football staff. The Nittany Lions running backs led the Penn State offense for most of the season, with Nicholas Singleton and Kaytron Allen becoming the first teammates in school history to each rush for over 1,000 yards.

With his departure coming less than a month after Singleton and Allen both announced their returns for 2025, Seider made it clear that he wanted his status with the Nittany Lions to have no bearing on the dynamic duo’s decision.

“We always said that it would take something special for us to leave, whether it’s a head coach, coordinator position. There were some chances with NFL teams, but when this opportunity came, we thought hard about it. We turned the phone off for a couple of days on purpose. Only talked to anyone else a little bit here and there.

“We just said it was time to do something different. Go challenge yourself. Go walk in different shoes. And I felt comfortable doing that because at the end of the season last year, when I met with my two kids that came back, I told them: do not come back to Penn State to come back for me. Make sure if you come back, you come back for your own selfish reason, or you leave for your own selfish reason, and I will support you in any manner I can.”

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