Things felt different for Maryland football last year. Not only did the Terrapins win a bowl game for the first time since 2010, but they also did so in a season that bucked several recent trends.
For Maryland to enjoy another winning season this year, some of those trends will need to continue. Let’s examine three of them.
Keep Taulia healthy
After an infamous track record of quarterback injuries and other failures at the position, the 2021 Maryland Terrapins experienced something rare for the program’s recent history: a consistently good quarterback.
Taulia Tagovailoa started all 13 of Maryland’s games last year, breaking or tying multiple single-season program records on his way to leading the Terps to their first bowl victory since joining the Big Ten. He set the single-season records for passing yards and completions and tied Scott Milanovich for passing touchdowns.
It’s not exactly groundbreaking analysis to say Tagovailoa provided a massive upgrade at the position, but it’s still worth examining some data to demonstrate how much he changed Maryland’s offense.
We’ll start with yards per pass attempt, an easy way to measure the quarterback’s efficiency.
With Tagovailoa throwing all but 15 of Maryland’s passes last year, the Terps averaged 8.1 yards per attempt. In Maryland’s six prior full seasons in the Big Ten, their highest team mark for yards/attempt was 7.0 during 2018’s 5-7 season.
From 2014 to 2019, Maryland’s cumulative yards/attempt ranked 11th amongst the 14 Big Ten schools, only surpassing Illinois, Rutgers and Northwestern. In comparison, last year’s 8.1 yards/attempt put them in sixth place.
Tagovailoa’s talent also led to Maryland passing the ball on over 50 percent of their plays for the first time in the Big Ten era, thanks to 489 passing attempts and 432 rushing attempts. In fact, the entire 21st century of Maryland football only has seen more passes than rushes one other year. Randy Edsall’s 2011 debut as the head coach saw Maryland pass 434 times and run 421 times on their way to a dreadful 2-10 season.
Even when Maryland had NFL talents at wide receiver like Torrey Smith, Stefon Diggs and DJ Moore, they were still less pass-happy than they were during Tagovailoa’s first full season.
The health and production of Tagovailoa radically altered how Maryland operated its offense and now he’s back for his redshirt junior season while bringing back Dontay Demus Jr. and Rakim Jarrett as his top targets. If Tagovailoa can avoid Maryland’s quarterback curse once again, we could very easily be looking at the best quarterback in the conference besides Ohio State’s CJ Stroud.
Continue battling the Big Ten powers
Perhaps it’s silly to insist a 17-point home loss felt like meaningful progress, but Maryland’s 31-14 defeat against Penn State in College Park last year showed the gap seemed to be closing between the two schools after a 59-0 loss in 2019.
Maryland was tied with Penn State in the fourth quarter and was in the red zone with the chance to make it a three-point game with under four minutes to play before Tagovailoa threw a deciding pick-six.
Ultimately, keeping a game close is not the same thing as actually winning a game, but it still demonstrated that Maryland was able to battle a team that had previously beaten them 59-0 and 66-3 in their prior two visits to College Park.
The Terps similarly showed signs of life when facing Michigan State, who was ranked #7 at the time. First, Maryland missed a second-half field goal to cut MSU’s lead down to ten points. Then, they had the ball on Michigan State’s 24-yard-line with the chance to make it a six-point game at the start of the fourth quarter before failing to convert on fourth and four.
Again, failing to execute in close games isn’t the same as winning, but it’s better to have missed opportunities in close games than to simply not have close games at all. Keeping a game competitive in the fourth quarter on the road against a top ten team counts for something, and it was another sign that Maryland could actually hang with teams better than them.
Also, if Maryland plays close games like Penn State and Michigan State again this year, perhaps their execution is better for pivotal plays. Another year of experience could help Tagovailoa reduce his interceptions and the Terps have seemingly upgraded at kicker with Eastern Michigan transfer Chad Ryland.
While I’m not going to demand much from the Ohio State game, it’d also feel like a sign of progress if Maryland can at least be pesky against some of the other Big Ten powers on the schedule this year. Not rolling over at Michigan and at Wisconsin this year would also show some real toughness on the road against a pair of schools they haven’t really battled with since changing conferences.
Maryland getting at least one win out of Michigan, Michigan State, Penn State and Wisconsin would be a huge success, but just playing respectably close games with those four schools would still feel like things are moving in the right direction.
Win your easiest games
Maryland’s 6-6 regular season last year followed what should be a reliable blueprint for how to become bowl eligible without too much difficulty.
They swept out-of-conference play, defeated Indiana and Rutgers and beat the weakest of their three Big Ten West opponents (Illinois) to return to a bowl for the first time since 2016.
To repeat that pattern this year, they’d need to beat whoever is weaker between Northwestern and Purdue and take care of business against this year’s out-of-conference slate on top of winning their annual meeting with the Hoosiers and Scarlet Knights.
Maryland’s out-of-conference slate this year is somewhat unique because it contains zero opponents from the power five or the FCS. They’ll start with the MAC’s Buffalo, followed by a visit to C-USA’s Charlotte and end it with hosting the SMU Mustangs of the AAC. This schedule is certainly different from prior years where they played West Virginia and Howard or Texas and Towson.
Of the three out-of-conference schools, SMU will certainly be the toughest challenge thanks to an offense that brings back Tanner Mordecai, a quarterback who passed for 39 touchdowns and over 3500 yards last year.
However, SMU was an underwhelming 4-4 in conference play last year with a defense that allowed at least 30 points five times last year. I’d expect a shootout, but Maryland should be able to beat teams like SMU if they ever want to be taken seriously facing teams like Penn State.
Of course, “win the easy games” has never been something Maryland consistently accomplishes. In 2018, their upset over Texas quickly lost its luster after laying an egg against Temple and 2019 similarly saw their 63-20 win over Syracuse look like smoke and mirrors following a 20-17 loss to the Owls in Philadelphia.
2021 was also the first year Maryland swept Indiana and Rutgers since joining the Big Ten. Given the strength of the top of the division, Maryland needs to beat the Hoosiers and Scarlet Knights virtually every year in order to keep appearing in bowl games.
If nothing else, the Terps need to make sure they don’t go backwards, and that means putting together another regular season of at least six wins. Those six wins will be much easier without a slip-up against teams like Buffalo and Rutgers.
BSL Analyst
Rose Katz is a recent graduate of the University of Maryland’s journalism school, where she worked for The Diamondback as the online managing editor and a sports blogger. As a student, she spent almost all of her time on campus in The Diamondback’s newsroom or at Xfinity Center, Ludwig Field and Maryland Stadium. Rose gained intern experience with the Mid-Atlantic Sports Network (MASN).