Penalties still on the Terrapins’ minds with Michigan up next

“If you have kids, you have an understanding.”

That’s the best analogy Maryland coach Mike Locksley could give about why his Terrapins continue to consistently draw flags through the first three weeks of the season.

“As a parent, you send your kid to school, and they have a foundation of how you raised them,” Locksley said Tuesday. “Sometimes they don’t act in character, and what do you do? Kick them out of your house?”

“I think people that have kids understand what it’s like to have them go out on the field and maybe play outside of what you’ve trained them to do.”

Penalties are still the talk of College Park as the time to correct the miscues is fleeting ahead of the Terrapins’ Big Ten opener Saturday at No. 4 Michigan (noon, Fox). 

Maryland (3-0) was flagged 15 times in last Saturday’s 34-27 win over SMU — the most penalties against the Terrapins in any game this century. Through three games, the total is 31, tied for third-worst among all 131 Division I FBS teams.

“It’s disappointing because there’s nobody that stresses the importance of playing the game the way it should be played on a daily basis than us and our staff,” Locksley said. “Our players understand it. But obviously, with me being the leader of this program, I’ve got to get those things fixed, which we’re working to do.”

To further drive home the point in meetings this week, Locksley showed his players a video of every penalty from the SMU game and “the commentary of everything” reporters and others said on Twitter about the team’s lack of discipline.

“We kind of feel like we let him down in that sense,” safety Dante Trader said. “That’s a lot of penalties, and we’re hurting ourselves and shooting ourselves in the foot. We’re playing against two teams every game we play because the amount of yards we’re giving them.”

Trader says changes are coming in practice, where if someone commits a penalty in drills, they’ll come off the field and be replaced.

“I think it’s just a matter of each player locking in and doing their job and not making any mistakes before the play even starts, including myself,” wide receiver Rakim Jarrett said. “It’s just a matter of your mindset and how locked in you are to every play.”

Discipline like that will be required throughout against Michigan, as the reigning Big Ten champions leave the Terrapins no margin for error. Michigan (3-0) has racked up 166 points, scoring over 50 in three-straight games for only the second time in program history. That makes them the nation’s top-scoring offense to go along with the fourth-best scoring defense.

“When you watch them in the first three games, they play very physical,” Locksley said. “They’ve got an exotic third-down package, which tells us we’ve got to be really good on first and second down in terms of trying to keep that blitz package off the field.”

Sophomore J.J. McCarthy has supplanted graduate student Cade McNamara at quarterback for the Wolverines after winning an open competition for the spot in the team’s first couple of games. Despite the change, Michigan’s offensive mantra hasn’t changed.

“Their philosophy is they want to run the football,” Locksley said. “They have explosive playmakers on the perimeter. J.J. is an explosive playmaker with his feet and his arm. They will feature the quarterback run because of that ability. They play to his strengths.”

“But he also has shown a propensity,” Locksley continued, “that when you commit to stopping him as a runner, he can take the shots that come off of the play-actions down the field where they’ve got talented receivers.”

One of those playmakers is junior running back Blake Corum. The Fauquier County native and alumnus of Baltimore’s St. Frances Academy has seven touchdowns already, five of which came in Michigan’s 59-0 shutout of Connecticut last week.

Maryland is undefeated after three weeks for the second season in a row. That mark becomes decidedly harder to maintain Saturday, but the Terrapins feel this team is closer, more together than last year — something that allowed them to grind out the win over SMU last week.

“Last year, most of us believe that if we’re in the game with SMU last year with that team we had, that we necessarily wouldn’t have been in that [winning] predicament,” Trader said.

The closeness and bond among these Terrapins may better prepare them for the Wolverines this time around. However, finding a different outcome than last year’s 59-18 loss remains to be seen.

“They had their way with us a year ago. I think you’ll see a lot of the same,” Locksley said. “I just hope that we play a little differently.”