Watch Maryland football’s press conference following an emotional loss to Ohio State

When Tyrrell Pigrome missed an open Jeshaun Jones on a two-point conversion attempt in overtime, Maryland football’s upset bid against Ohio State came up just short in a 52-51 loss.

Interim head coach Matt Canada, running back Anthony McFarland and linebacker Tre Watson addressed the team following the gut-wrenching loss.

Watson didn’t mince words when talking about the loss, saying the team was “distraught.”

“There is no words that can reconcile what happened to us,” the graduate transfer said. “I’m sure you can go down to the line of every guy who played in that game and they feel there’s one play that they could have back.”

After a few more questions, Watson was asked about Canada, and had glowing praise for the interim head coach.

“He’s been open,” Watson said. “He’s been extremely receptive, which is what you need to be in my opinion as a coach. I’ve now had six head coaches in five years of college football, I had four in high school as well so I know a lot of different coaching styles. Being able to give and take with players is huge, you have to find a middle ground where everything were doing is helping us get better as a team and nothing is detracting from what we’re doing. He’s done a great job with that.”

“Obviously it’s been an extremely tough situation. You come in just expecting to call plays and now he’s got to manage a million other things on the fly. He’s just done a great job with that and he’s just allowed us to be comfortable in what we’re doing and just go out and play.”

After the players left, Canada said he decided to go for the win before Ohio State scored to start overtime. He sat down with Pigrome and said they had two plays they liked.

“It was a gut call,” Canada said. “They were scoring, we were scoring and we had the ball and had to make one play to win. Obviously it didn’t work and that’s my fault. I wasn’t being aggressive, I was just trying to win.”

Canada also said he changed up his approach this week, especially since Maryland has had disappointing results against better competition.

“I told them just to go out and play football and not worry who we we’re playing against,” Canada said. “Some games we go out and play really well against a certain team and other teams we go out and we haven’t played that way. I did try to go out and have little different way of looking at it and say let’s make sure we’re being us.”

Even after over 500 yards of offense and 51 points against the No. 10 team in the country, the loss is the only thing that matters to Canada.

“It will just stack up as one of those losses where I wish I would’ve called a better play here or there,” he said. “The losses are what I always remember the most.”