Maryland Football Comparison

I posted a lot of what I'm going to say in this post as a comment in a recent post about recruiting, but I felt it might need it's own FanPost. If not, I appologize and shut it down, it's cool.

But what I feel is a great comparison for our football team just came to me recently and MIGHT make some people feel a little better about our situation. I'm not saying that it's EXACTLY like our situation, because I still believe Edsall needs to change a couple things up with the staff and his own personality really for it to all come together, but it just makes sense to me.

When I look at our football team, I see a lot of similarities between us, and the Kansas Jayhawks of about 5-6years ago. You could say they were a mediocre team at best for a long time, but once the pieces were put in place they really made a run for it.

A lot of people have been wondering about DOB. Will he stay or go? Why did he seem to regress so much this season? Obviously I can't answer the first question, but the second one seems pretty clear to me. The reason he was so successful last season wasn't just because he is only a pro style/ west coast QB. He had a full season to learn the system and had talent around him like Torrey Smith. As bad as this season was for DOB, he gained valuable experience in our system as did the talent around him. Guys like Dorsey, Coxson, King, Leak can all be very good in my opinion. A lot of what I saw from DOB was just a lack of confidence in what he was doing, but with the experience I don't think that will be there anymore.

As for the QB controversy we may have, Kansas had the same kind of thing. They had Kerry Meier who was their athletic spread kind of QB, and Todd Reesing who was their passing QB. They transitioned Kerry Meier into a WR (who is in the NFL right now I might add) and made Reesing their starter and the rest was history. Meier developed nicely, and Reesing became a Heisman contender and led the Jayhawks to a nearly undefeated season and win over Virginia Tech in the Orange Bowl.

So the similarities are scary to me. Both offenses took time and the right players to get it going. And the defenses were a little under staffed and young. If anything, I think with added depth to our defense we should be better than Kansas was in a couple years. Sure they had guys like Aqib Talib I believe, but we have some talented guys with swagger on our defense to when they develop like Hendy.

And the best part about it to me is that I don't think necessarily that we have to wait as long as Kansas did to get the talent in here. Like I said, I think DOB can easily be our Reesing. I think our young talented WR's gained valuable experience this season. Our young defense has talent, just not a lot of depth to it right now which will come. I really think that a lot of this year you can attribute to an extreme change in systems as well as a lot of youth. That's not to say that changes don't need to be made. We need a new DC and ST coach, we need a recruiter which hopefully one of those new coaches will be, and Edsall needs to make the transition from being a disciplinarian to an overseer (if that is a word). I know that the trend on that last one is riding against me, but to me if Edsall wants to save his job he's going to have to change it up at least slightly at some point.

And to the people who would say that Kansas didn't sustain their success, I don't think we are comparable in that area at all. We are in such a better location and have more of a famous backing (Under Armour). Kids in the DMV want to come here, they just need to be given a reason other than just to stay at home. I'm not saying we will get everyone, but I think 70% of the DMV kids is realistic considering we have no real recruiting rival within 4-5 hours of here. So if we start winning, if in DOB's senior year (if he's still here obviously) he's able to lead us to at least competing to get to the Orange Bowl like Reesing did at Kansas, I can see big things for this program.

Maybe I just want it so bad that I'm making myself buy into it, but the similarities are too much to ignore in my opinion. Everyone has been looking for a reason to believe, and this may be it. It comes with stipulations, but I don't think that they are so unreasonable they won't happen. And this is not necessarily a post in support of Edsall, just a post in support of our future if that makes sense. So I'd rather not turn this into another 700 comment post on why we hate Edsall this time, I'm exhausted from it. Let's see if we can't make this more in support of our players. And if I'm forgetting anything positive or negative, I appologize and let me know.