More on Maryland's Turnover Bonanza

by Ben Broman on Sep 27, 2009 12:56 PM EDT in Football Comment 3 comments

In case you didn't hear, Maryland turned the ball over quite a bit against Rutgers yesterday. By quite a bit, I mean a ton. Like, five times. That's a lot of turnovers.

It's so many turnovers that the last time it happened to Maryland was in 2006, when the Terps went into Morgantown and got beaten by West Virginia 45-24. It also occurred in 2004, when Maryland lost to VT 55-6. The memories hurt.

And that's it. The phenomenon has only occurred twice under Ralph Friedgen, who's been in power since 2001. Christ, it's only happened 3 times since 1999 (after that, the Terp record books get pretty fuzzy). And here's a shocker: Maryland lost all three of those games.

Yeah, turnovers are killers, but you don't need me to tell you that. However, maybe you need me to tell you that Maryland is an awful 117th in the nation in turnover margin this year, only better than Buffalo, Nevada, and Miami (OH), among whom there is a combined one win.

Let's make it worse, shall we? The Terps are 116th in the nation in TO lost, but that's also tied for second to last place. Thank god for Miami (OH); you made a good choice, Clay Belton. We're slightly less turnover prone than your old, now-winless team! Congratulations.

While we're on the topic of mistakes, how about sacks? The Terps are 113th in sacks allowed, but at least they're better than Virginia, who's dead last. They're also 114th in tackles for loss allowed - still better than the Cavs, but are they aspiring to be Virginia?

It's clear the Terps can't win like this, or anything close to like this. They aren't that good. As I've said before, it's my opinion that turnovers, when a trend appears, are a discipline issue, or at the very least a decision-making issue. When the players committing them are seniors and juniors, that's on the coaches for not instilling the discipline and decision-making. The line is young, so the coaches get a semi-pass on that, but it's their fault for not recruiting linemen at all in 2006. We'll have more on the coach/non-coach thing later, but it's pretty telling in my opinion. And unless a lot of things change fast, we're staring down the barrel of a three win season - or worse.

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Do we now have a defense?

If we do, it should take a lot of pressure off the offense. Without a defense, the offense had to outscore the opposition for us to win. If the defense shows some consistency, Chris can afford to throw the ball away more often and not take so many sacks. It also means field position football which isn’t very popular in College Park. However, it could give us a couple of wins while the offensive line matures.

by wmterp on Sep 27, 2009 2:45 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

Maybe, maybe not

Rutgers offense is terrible, and their QB was a crappy backup. The defense looked really good, but you can’t tell how much of that was due to Rutgers’ crappiness.

by Ben Broman on Sep 27, 2009 3:00 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Do we have a defense?

Not even close to having a defense. The Maryland defense did well until it fell apart in the final minutes (did they just quit, or what?), BUT Rutgers was completely one-dimensional. They threw the ball maybe six times the whole game? RU didn’t score an offensive touchdown until the final minutes…. and it was a 60-yard run off the left end. Yet Maryland was getting gashed by their Wildcat quarterback. What else did they THINK he was going to do? Maryland didn’t win a single turnover nor (I think) did they get a single sack.

Brown’s defensive scheme has all these corner blitzes and they end up going all the way around the pocket and can’t provide any pressure whatsoever. The few sacks we have had this season were all by linebackers as far as I remember.

This was by far the worst game of the season. Judging by their performance yesterday, Rutgers is hands-down the worst team they’ve played so far. I was hesitant to write off the season altogether because I thought Cal was pretty good (maybe not judging by their loss to Oregon) and JMU and MTSU have quirky, hard-to-defend offenses. But I think this game really exposed Maryland as a legitimately bad team. The players are not bad, but most of them seem to lack discipline and mastery of the fundamentals. That’s all on the coaching staff.

by JC1 on Sep 27, 2009 5:46 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs