11/10/2025
Terps football: Rinse, lather, repeat
MIKE BURKE
Allegany Communications Sports
It’s the same old song and dance with Maryland and how they go about losing football games – failure to take care of the little things and a propensity for turning little things into big blunders, the most basic of football fundamentals: blown assignments, poor ex*****on, inability to take advantage of opportunity and no discipline.
In their 35-20 loss at Rutgers on Saturday, the Terps’ fifth loss in a row, they followed the script from last week, and the week prior to that, and for weeks prior to that – a face-mask penalty by the tight end to nullify his own big gain and peter out a potential scoring drive that could have provided Maryland with an early two-score lead, a false start by an offensive lineman on a fourth-and-one deep in Rutgers territory that forced a field goal rather than an opportunity for another touchdown, a turnover deep in Rutgers territory and the worst kickoff and punt units this side of a high school team’s that regularly gift opponents with favorable field position to begin every possession.
It’s the same dirty laundry list that head coach Mike Locksley checks off after each game with, “We’re going to get that corrected,” but never seemingly does, because the same old little things keep adding up each week to help cost Maryland games they have opportunities to win.
Not that the Rutgers game resembled the three games the Terps let get away from themselves early in the season that could have led to a 7-0 Maryland start. Rutgers ran the football right up Maryland’s arse, battering the Terps’ already battered defense that had valiantly carried the team through the first seven games.
The embattled Locksley said afterward, "The development of a young team and an inexperienced team sometimes has its ups and downs. I can tell you that we're in the middle of a tough stretch for this group and the young guys … It's going to be my job to keep showing up for these guys and coach them through this.”
Locksley said that while the Terps, after nine games, are no longer young, they remain inexperienced and it continues to show, even in the play of outstanding freshman quarterback Malik Washington, particularly on short routes and touch passes.
It’s frustrating to see, particularly after the 4-0 start that was this close to being 7-0, but is now 4-5. Yet consider Saturday afternoon’s most sobering statistic, as the FS1 play-by-play guy pointed out that 70% of Maryland’s offense this season had been produced by true freshmen. Not redshirt freshmen, true freshmen. Guys who were in high school last year.
In other words, when you consider most of the best players on the defensive side of the ball are also true freshmen, Maryland is actually playing boys against men most weeks they take the field.
That isn’t an excuse, it’s fact.
This, of course, will be taken into consideration by athletic director Jim Smith as he contemplates the first big decision he is going to have to make in a matter of a month.
Smith has openly endorsed Locksley as the head coach for the present and future, but that was three weeks before the losing streak hit five. The big-time boosters, what few Maryland athletics actually has, are said to be calling for a change.
Smith was brought to College Park from professional sports in July to raise money and to make the Maryland gameday experience more inviting, and he has made great strides in both in just a short period of time. He will have to find a way to toe the line, though, with what prominent boosters Maryland has while still trying to welcome more in, which, of course, takes winning, which Maryland football has not done since the month of September … for the past two seasons.
Yet to win in this day and age, you need money – lots and lots of it.
Consider, Maryland was slow to adapt to changing name, image and likeness (NIL) standards, and it’s still unknown what its distribution will be to football of approximately $20.5 million from the House v. NCAA settlement. But the Terps can no longer hide behind their previous contemporaries, who have now zoomed past them, namely Indiana, Vanderbilt and Virginia.
Boosters ask, if those schools can turn it around so quickly, why can’t Maryland? It’s a fair question, but the answer can be found in their checkbooks and many more checkbooks that Maryland does not yet have; because when you make the investment, you get returns. Just ask Indiana, Vanderbilt and Virginia.
The sentiment for change in College Park becomes more understandable with each passing frustrating Saturday, but, again, at the same time that Penn State, LSU, Florida, Auburn, UCLA, Stanford, Arkansas and Virginia Tech are looking for head coaches, how desirable do you believe the Maryland job is going to be?
The sentiment might not be wrong, but the timing for Maryland is most certainly not right.
Given that and the likelihood of Maryland losing its current and future collection of talented young players who are deeply loyal to Locksley, including Zion Elee, one of the top five recruits in the nation, it feels like Maryland is and should be Locksed in for at least another season.
“We ain’t winning enough,” the Maryland head football coach said during his postgame press conference on Saturday.
No disrespect to Rutgers, but, no, Michael Locksley, you ain’t.
Mike Burke writes about sports and other stuff for Allegany Communications. He began covering sports for the Prince George’s Sentinel in 1981 and joined the Cumberland Times-News sports staff in 1984, serving as sports editor for over 30 years. Contact him at [email protected]. Follow him on X
