Longtime college football coach Urban Meyer, who made a habit of dipping into the DMV as part of his recruiting efforts at Ohio State, is confident Michael Locksley can turn Maryland around but says there needs to be a sense of urgency as part of the program’s rebuilding efforts.
Since going 31-8 from 2001-2003, the Terps are 85-112. Worse yet, they’re 41-70 since Ralph Friedgen was fired as head coach and 28-46 since joining the Big Ten. And as members of the Big Ten, they’re competing directly with some powerhouse programs – including Ohio State, where Meyer coached from 2012-2018.
But Meyer, now a college football analyst for Fox Sports, thought 2019 would be the year the Terps turned it around. In Meyer’s final year as head coach of the Buckeyes in 2018, they escaped College Park, Md., with a 52-51 overtime win in November 2018. Meyer saw new Pittsburgh Steelers running back Anthony McFarland Jr. run for 298 yards and nearly will Maryland to a win.
And then the Terps started the 2019 season with a 79-0 victory against Howard and a 63-20 win against Syracuse.
“When I saw the season start the way it did, I knew they had McFarland, I knew they had this incredible talent — if you remember the year before, we barely got out of there with an overtime win, and they had talent all over the field,” Meyer said on Glenn Clark Radio May 13. “Maryland’s kind of one of those places where there’s great talent, but for some reason, it’s hard for them to pull it all together and I thought Mike would be the guy last year to do it.”
Under Meyer’s watch, the Buckeyes went 83-9 and won the national title in 2014. Meyer went 5-0 against the Terps — his teams outscored Maryland 277-120 during those contests — and used some talent from the DMV to help get it done.
Defensive end Chase Young, who had 30.5 sacks for the Buckeyes from 2017-2019 en route to becoming the No. 2 overall pick in the 2020 NFL Draft, is a product of DeMatha Catholic in Hyattsville, Md. Quarterback Dwayne Haskins, who threw for 4,831 yards for Ohio State in 2018 and was a first-round pick in 2019, is a product of Bullis School in Potomac, Md. Haskins had committed to Maryland in 2015 when Locksley was the offensive coordinator but later flipped to the Buckeyes.
Other local talent Meyer recruited included offensive tackle Isaiah Prince (Eleanor Roosevelt), linebacker Keandre Jones (Good Counsel) and defensive lineman Taron Vincent (Gilman/IMG Academy). Alabama and Penn State are among the other high-end programs that successfully dip into the DMV in recruiting.
Locksley’s goal is to build a winner by keeping local talent home, and he’s off to a good start with the Class of 2021. Meyer briefly crossed paths with Locksley when he took the Florida job after the 2004 season. Locksley was the running backs coach at Florida from 2003-2004, then left to become the offensive coordinator at Illinois.
“I know Mike all the way back from my Florida days. He was on my staff for about two months and then he went to Illinois,” Meyer said. “I’m good friends with him, I know him well. Very good offensive mind, recruits very well, but at the end of the day you’ve got to get your team to play, and right now that’s on him. At the end of the day, your job as the head football coach is to get that team to play, and last year was a disappointment. I have confidence in Mike that he can do it, but … it’s not one of those things [where] you’ve got three, four years to build this thing. He’s got to get this thing going.”
To Meyer’s point, not only has the Terps’ record been disheartening in recent years but the way they’ve lost some Big Ten games. In 2019 alone, Maryland lost games by 59, 26, 42, 31, 59 and 47 points. The area most often mentioned as to why the Terps have struggled in recent years is the lack of consistent, quality quarterback play, whether a result of injury or on-field performance.
Maryland hasn’t opened consecutive seasons with the same starting quarterback since C.J. Brown accomplished the feat in 2013 and 2014. Maryland is one of three schools top-rated quarterback Caleb Williams is considering along with presumptive favorite Oklahoma and LSU. The Gonzaga signal caller is one of the top recruits in the nation regardless of position.
As for 2020, veteran Josh Jackson and redshirt freshman Lance LeGendre figure to battle it out in camp for the starting job, assuming there’s a season in the fall. Locksley could also add a transfer to the mix. Regardless, figuring out the quarterback position is Job No. 1 for Locksley in the short and long term.
“It’s almost comical sometimes when I hear someone say, ‘Well, the NFL is a quarterback league.’ And I always come back at them, ‘Well, yeah, so is college and so is high school,’” Meyer said. “The game of football is a quarterback game. I’m not sure where they’re at with quarterback right now. I have not really studied it; this summer I will. But yeah, you’re dead in the water without a quarterback. But there’s an answer to that: go get you one. There’s transfer portals. You have to get you a quarterback.”
For more from Meyer, listen to the full interview here:
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