Torrey Smith Resuscitates His Hype Machine, Reminds Maryland to Throw Him the Ball

Ok, so he might not be a Heisman candidate, but the hype surrounding Maryland's Torrey Smith is slowly building itself back up.

He entered the season on the Biletnikoff watch list and as an All-ACC first teamer. The Navy game wasn't good to Maryland's most dangerous offensive player, mostly because the Terps attempted just 5 passes and Navy kicked away from him. Not a great start, to put it lightly.

But in the past two games, he's experienced a mini-revival - not that he really had to recover from anything, but whatever - and has re-proven just how good he is. Against Morgan State, he caught two TDs. Against West Virginia, his two long TD receptions in the second half (one 60-yarder, one 80-yarder) were basically all the offense had.

In fact, check his statline from the past two games: 6 receptions, 190 yards, 4 TDs, 32 yards per catch. It's not a huge sample size, but ultimately, that's Maryland's fault for not getting him the ball enough. Considering the relatively small number of targets he's had, that's a pretty ridiculous statline.

By my count he had just five total targets against West Virginia, and the vast majority (actually, maybe all of them) came in the second half.

Hopefully this performance was the very obvious hit over the head that Ralph Friedgen or James Franklin needed to realize that Smith is a game-changing player that needs to touch the ball several times every game.

If Smith had brought in the touchdown he ended up dropping in the third quarter, which would've cut the deficit to just seven, the tone of this post would be wildly different. As it stands, I'm not calling the Heisman campaign fully re-energized, but the hype machine has started to rev its engine.