COLLEGE PARK — What Maryland did — or didn’t do — Saturday wasn’t worth Terrapins players seeing again.
“We didn’t even watch the tape,” Maryland coach Mike Locksley said Tuesday of a 51-15 loss to No. 9 Penn State. “Because we came nowhere close to the standard that we have come to expect for our program, and that game showed us that we’re not there yet.”
For the Terrapins (5-4, 2-4. Big Ten), it’s been a bleak month-plus of losing with their 5-0 start to the season now a distant memory.
“You know, it’s one thing to be positive and put a smile on your face and show up and say, ’Hey, it’s going to eventually turn and be OK.’ But it’s another thing to understand the reality of where we are,” Locksley said. “It’s been five weeks since we’ve had a victory and so I told our players we’ve got to understand that.”
Mistakes are certainly one aspect of the problem. Maryland boasted a plus-9 turnover margin during the season-opening five-game winning streak. During its four-game losing streak, that’s reversed to negative-8.
The main factor, though, seems to be consistency. Specifically, balancing an offensive engine that’s predicated on explosive plays but needs to find a way to methodically move the football when those opportunities dry up, as they have in the last month.
“The missing piece for us on the offensive side is can we drive the ball down?,” Locksley said. “What happens when the explosives aren’t showing up? Can we show the discipline and the execution to consistently get the 4 or 5 yards to convert the fourth-and-ones, the third-and-ones to extend drives? To me, those are the things and that’s where I put a lot of the energy and my actions into.”
A place where consistency is glaringly lacking is in the backfield. Against Penn State, Maryland running backs combined for only seven carries for -6 yards. Two weeks ago at Northwestern, the total was 14 carries for 80 yards.
“Our inability to run the ball just comes with our inability to execute, and we struggled with the interior part of our running game,” Locksley said. “We’ve got to be able to be stout or more stout in the interior part where we don’t allow penetration. We don’t allow guys to get knocked back on us, which doesn’t allow our backs to start and get momentum coming downhill.”
This Saturday at Nebraska could be another matchup where Maryland struggles to get traction on the ground. The Cornhuskers (5-4, 3-3) boast the nation’s 22nd-best scoring defense (18.8 points per game) and a staunch interior run defense.
“The ability to run the ball, especially this time of the year, is really important,” Locksley said. “So we’re working hard to get the running game corrected and figure out what are the best runs and the best way for us to run the ball based on what we’re doing on our offensive line and based on what our backs can get executed.”
Locksley has been through adversity as a head coach before.
“This is not my longest losing streak,” he pointed out — and unlike past ruts, such as a seven-game skid in 2019, the Maryland coach doesn’t expect this one to continue due to the culture he sees within his team.
“I’ve been a part of some teams here where … you can tell by the energy on the field that it’s gonna be a long, long day or long, long week,” Locksley said. “This team is not that team. They are built for the adversity. They’re built for the turbulence that we’re facing.”
The carrot of bowl eligibility for a third-straight season still hangs in front of the Terrapins, but wideout Jeshaun Jones said that’s not the driving mentality behind snapping the losing streak.
“Of course that’s huge, and that’s big for coach and the program, and we all want to go to a bowl game,” Jones said, “but I think it’s more so getting on the right track. I think we expect to go to a bowl game, and it’s more so winning is what we want to do.
• George Gerbo can be reached at ggerbo@washingtontimes.com.
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