5 statistics that show how good Maryland football’s offense has been

Maryland football has opened the season with consecutive 50-point games for the first time in program history. Saturday’s 63-point explosion is the most the Terps have scored since 1954. Perhaps even more impressive is how efficient Maryland has been when it comes to scoring.

Maryland is the only FBS team to outscore its number of offensive plays.

Behind team outputs of 51 and 63 points in Weeks 1 and 2, the Terps are 2-0 and have outscored their opponents by 56 points. They don’t do it by wearing down the defense, going on long, sustained drives. It’s quite the opposite, actually. In 120 minutes of football, the Terps have only possessed the ball for just under 51 minutes. But in those nearly 51 minutes, Maryland has scored 114 points while only running 112 offensive plays.

Ty Johnson is averaging 15.1 yards per carry.

After carrying the ball 12 times for 132 yards against Texas, Johnson followed up that performance with a five-carry, 124-yard outburst that included touchdowns of 74 and 46 yards. He’d probably get more touches a game if he didn’t score mile-long touchdowns every other time he got the ball.

D.J. Moore and Taivon Jacobs are big play threats on the outside.

In two games, Moore has 14 catches for 230 yards and three touchdowns through the air and a 21-yard rush for a score. Jacobs is second on the team with eight catches for 140 yards and a touchdown. With Moore and Jacobs averaging 115 and 70 yards per game, respectively, Maryland has two players in the top 10 of the Big Ten in receiving yards per game—a claim no other team in the conference can make.

The offense is averaging 9.1 yards per play.

Maryland is gaining 508 yards per game so far this season, thanks to its explosive offense which has scored 11 touchdowns of at least 20 yards. Granted, the Terps did play Towson, which is an FCS team, and Texas may not be good as previously anticipated, but gaining yards at such a clip is impressive nonetheless. It’ll be interesting to see if Maryland can keep it up once conference play starts at the end of September.

Over 13 percent of Maryland’s plays go for 20 or more yards.

15 of the Terps’ 112 plays have gone for at least 20 yards. Again, 11 of those big plays have been touchdowns. These big gains that put the offense ahead of schedule are at least partially responsible for Maryland’s offense only focusing around a handful of players thus far. As the season progresses, moving the ball like this will inevitably become more difficult. If the Terps can keep up a similarly efficient offensive output, it would be a good indicator that the program is in a better spot than expected this season.