Terps Demolished By Wake Early, Late Comeback Makes It Close: 42-32

by Ben Broman on Oct 10, 2009 9:46 PM EDT in Football

That certainly didn't go as expected.

After four really, really bad games for Maryland, things were looking up after a surprising, somehwat impressive win over Clemson. Perhaps foolishly, many Maryland fans were expecting a season turnaround, continuing against Wake Forest in a game that had surprising conference implications

That was a bad idea.

Outside of an 85-yard kickoff return from Torrey Smith and a minor emergence by Gary Douglas, there was basically nothing positive for Maryland. Sure, there was a slight comeback, but the game was well over at that point. Wake won 42-32, but the score isn't anywhere close to how one-sided this game was.

Want to know how bad it was? Wake had 381 yards of offense...in the FIRST HALF. Maryland barely broke 100. They were on pace for 762 yards!

The Terps' defense was porous and all-around terrible; Maryland's offense was unable to move the ball at all. There was no emotion, not even to start the game.

Does Ralph Friedgen's job need to be in jeopardy if his teams are expected to win? It seems that way, and after this game, it certainly seems like there will be plenty of heat on Friedgen's seat again.

Maryland did see a minor comeback toward the end of the game, but, like I said, it was done by that point. I appreciate the effort there, but it was way too little, way too late.

Yeah, I expected a loss - actaully, a loss of these proportions weren't out of the question in my mind leading up the game - but that doesn't make me any happier about it. All of the time Friedgen bought with the Clemson win just disappeared with this performance. It's bad when the good performance is the outlier, not the bad ones.

I don't want to rehash anything specific, but I will go over some more stuff later tonight/tomorrow morning.

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Our DL and OL plus a good Wake offense killed us.

I don’t think a DL made a tackle in the first quarter. The backs and LBs were making all of them. The quicker Wake OLs kept getting the angles on our DLs. Deege Galt kept getting trapped inside and allowed Wake to go outside the entire first quarter. Travis Ivey looked like he was physically overmatched. I really couldn’t understand how they kept putting him on the ground. One thing is clear, we are going to see a lot of teams go wide on us with runs and flare passes. As to our OL, the problems they are having is more of a mystery to me. They are just inconsistent.

Wake’s offense is the real deal. The receivers can really run with the ball. Skinner sees the entire field and doesn’t panic if he has room to move out of the pocket. We needed a real good pass rush from the front four and didn’t get it. We had no push from the tackles and no outside speed rush. When they allowed Skinner to run out of the pocket to get more time, he was unstoppable.

by wmterp on Oct 10, 2009 10:19 PM EDT reply actions