Jayden Shipps believes he is poised for a breakout sophomore season with Maryland football as he settles into a new position and the game begins to slow down for him.
The 6-foot-1, 182-pound Shipps appeared in all 12 games as a freshman cornerback, recording 11 tackles and one sack. He has since moved to safety, a move that has added to his repertoire and ability to impact the game from multiple spots in the secondary.
“I would say it is definitely more natural for me because I played nickel and corner at Maryland,” Shipps said. “I’ve been in that corner room, and it made me a better safety because now I move like a corner, I play like a corner, but I’m at safety now. I can cover the slots. I can cover anybody on the field.
“I feel that makes me more of a valuable player because I’ve got the corner background, but also I can be rangy and move as a safety. I have the frame for it. That puts me in a better [situation] because now I can expand more, get better. … I think safety is my spot, for sure.”
While the position change has come naturally, it has also come with new responsibilities. Unlike cornerbacks, safeties are often tasked with understanding and communicating the responsibilities of players across the entire defense.
Having experience at corner helps Shipps anticipate what teammates on the outside are seeing, but he acknowledged that the transition remains a learning process.
“Communication,” Shipps said of the most challenging part of his move to safety. “It’s 100 percent better now, but at corner you just listen and do your job. At safety, you must look at everything and know what everybody is doing on the field. I must know what the linebacker is doing because it’s going to affect you. So it’s understanding the game. Safety has made me so much of a better player because now I understand what everybody on the field is doing.”
Senior defensive back Lavain Scruggs sees plenty of similarities between Shipps’ development and his own emergence in the program. Scruggs learned from Beau Brade and Dante Trader Jr., while Shipps learned from Jalen Huskey and Scruggs a year ago.
“I see him as the younger me,” Scruggs said. “… I’ll say my big expectations for him are just to communicate and anticipate. Anticipating motions, where’s the [running back], what run plays can they use? All the little things that I want him to know and do fast, that’s what I expect him to do this year.”
Scruggs said he spent considerable time working with Shipps during the offseason, emphasizing the importance of “the little things.”
“Coming into spring ball and summer, I stuck with him a lot. I told him it’s all about the little things,” Scruggs said. “It’s all about how you see and anticipate things, knowing what the offense can do. It’s all about how you can attack the offense. Shipps is one of those guys who wants to learn, who’s about his business, and [he is] going to make an impact this season.”
The relationship between Scruggs and Shipps dates back to their time together at Archbishop Spalding in Severn, which Shipps described as “one of his favorite experiences.” Scruggs was a senior at Spalding in 2021 when Shipps was a freshman.
“As a young guy coming in, he was just about his business,” Scruggs said of Shipps at Spalding. “The defensive coordinator was always on his head, but it was for good reason. He saw the best in him, and it was just like him coming here. Last year he put his head down and just worked.”
Shipps and Scruggs are two of five former Spalding players now at Maryland, along with quarterback Malik Washington, defensive lineman Delmar White and defensive back Sean Johnson.
Reuniting with former high school teammates has eased Shipps’ transition to college football while also helping accelerate his development on the field. One example is his relationship with Washington. The two roommates regularly discuss their on-field decisions and thought processes after practice.
“It was a lot easier because I have some people I can relate to and ask questions,” Shipps said. “They were open to showing me the ways of playing college football, so I learned the process a little faster.”
Shipps said the competition in the MIAA A Conference also helped prepare him for what was to come in the college ranks, as did working with Maryland cornerbacks coach Aazaar Abdul-Rahim and the rest of the coaching staff.
“I would say coming from Spalding, we played a lot of good competition, and I was also going against competition every day in practice, so I feel like that also prepared me as well,” Shipps said.
As Maryland turns its attention toward the 2026 season, Shipps made it clear the Terps are determined to move past last year’s disappointing 4-8 campaign.
Though the annual Big Ten preseason media poll predicts that Maryland will finish 15th in the conference, Shipps said he welcomes the opportunity to prove the skeptics wrong.
“It’s going to be a good year for us,” Shipps said. “I think we have a lot of good guys. I think we’re overlooked right now, but it’s cool. That’s what we want. We want to be the underdogs, then we’re going to show a lot of people in the Big Ten why we should be out there with the big names.”
Photo Credit: Courtesy of Maryland Athletics