College Sports |

3 takeaways from Maryland football’s 27-24 loss to Michigan State

If there ever was a time for a search for a silver lining, that time is now for Maryland football.

One of the few bright spots in Saturday’s shocking 27-24 setback to visiting Michigan State on Saturday was the growing connection between quarterback Billy Edwards Jr. and wide receiver Tai Felton.

With 11 catches for 152 yards and one touchdown against the Spartans and seven receptions for 178 yards and two scores in a 50-7 victory over UConn on Aug. 31, Felton became the first Terps receiver to collect 100 yards in each of his first two games since Dontay Demus Jr. in 2021 and the first player to amass 150 yards in back-to-back games since Jermaine Lewis in 1995. With 330 yards in two games, the senior has already exceeded the 309 yards he compiled in 13 games in 2022 and is halfway to his career high of six touchdown catches last year.

Edwards Jr., a redshirt junior, acknowledged his rapport with Felton but emphasized that he wants to develop chemistry with more of his wide receivers.

“The past two games, it’s been a little bit more with Tai inside with just so many teams playing Cover 2 and trying to take away shots,” he said. “So we’ll continue to build on that connection and just me with all of the receivers — whether that’s with [junior] Shaleak Knotts, [junior] Octavian Smith [Jr.], [senior] Kaden Prather. We’ll continue to build on that. They have the confidence in me, and I have the confidence in them that regardless of who’s in the game, we can make stuff happen.”

Here are three observations from Saturday night’s loss:

The Big Ten remains too big for Maryland

For all of the talk about contending for a conference title last season and upsetting the status quo this fall, the Terps continue to lay eggs at critical junctures.

Last year’s team had a chance to rebound from a 37-17 setback at then-No. 4 Ohio State after a 5-0 start, but dropped back-to-back games to Illinois (27-24 on Oct. 14) and Northwestern (33-27 on Oct. 28). On Saturday, Maryland faced a Spartans roster filled with 61 newcomers (tied for seventh-most at the NCAA Football Bowl Subdivision level) and coming off of an unimpressive 16-10 win against Florida Atlantic.

But the offense couldn’t run the ball, the defense got gashed through the air, and redshirt junior kicker Jack Howes missed a 41-yard field goal that would have inflated the Terps’ lead to 10 points with less than five minutes left. After the game, coach Mike Locksley conceded that Saturday’s matchup was “one we should’ve won,” which sounds nice but spotlights the blemish of a 0-1 start in the Big Ten and heightens the magnitude of an upcoming four-game stretch that includes games against Indiana (2-0) and Northwestern (1-1).

Even so, Locksley refused to sound the alarm after the loss to Michigan State.

“It’s early in the year. So I’m not in here telling you that the season is lost because we took a tough loss here at home against a good team,” he said. “But I think and expect this team to respond in the right way. They’ve done the work, they continue to do things the way we need them done in practice, but it has to translate to games. When we have opportunities to win Big Ten games like we had with this one, we have to seize the opportunity.”

Senior safety Dante Trader Jr. expressed confidence in what Locksley has consistently described as a “player-led culture.”

“Guys like me, guys like the leaders, we’ve got to do our jobs,” the McDonogh graduate said. “This is where the leadership comes like we’ve been talking about and preaching about the whole time. It’s not all lost. We’ve got to get back to the drawing board.”

Let the second-guessing commence

Armchair quarterbacks will have a field day reviewing Locksley’s decisions in that pivotal fourth quarter.

Howes’ 41-yarder that he pushed right occurred on fourth-and-1 at Michigan State’s 23-yard line. On the ensuing play, sophomore quarterback Aidan Chiles hurled a deep throw to freshman wide receiver Nick Marsh for a 77-yard touchdown that allowed the Spartans to tie the score at 24.

Locksley had no qualms about sending in Howes, who had converted all four of his field goals before that miss — including a 45-yarder in the third quarter.

“Jack’s our kicker,” he said. “We had a chance to go up two scores. If I do kick it and we don’t score, you’re going to say, ‘Why didn’t you go for it?’ If I kick it and we make it, I’m damned if I do and damned if I don’t from that standpoint. But the smart play is to go up by two possessions, 10 points.”

On Maryland’s next series, the offense faced fourth-and-1 at its own 44, but Locksley chose to send in redshirt sophomore Bryce McFerson, who punted the ball to Michigan State’s 16 with 2:12 remaining. The Spartans capitalized with a 13-play, 65-yard drive culminating in graduate student kicker Jonathan Kim’s 37-yard field goal with one second left on the clock.

Locksley could have called a play for Edwards Jr., who excelled at short-yardage and goal-line situations last season when he scored a team-high seven rushing touchdowns. But Locksley said the goal was to pin Michigan State inside the 10 and rely on the defense.

Edwards Jr. wasn’t going to contradict Locksley and said opponents are more likely to be aware of his running ability in short-yardage situations.

“I think we’re just trying to get creative with things,” he said. “I’ve got the utmost confidence in our game plans as a whole and specifically our short-yardage and stuff like that. At the end of the day, it just comes down to mindset and going out there and taking it.”

The experienced defense that was supposed to be a strength looked lost

Michigan State outlasted Florida Atlantic despite a sluggish performance from Chiles, who went 10-for-24 for 114 yards, zero touchdowns and two interceptions.

On Saturday, Chiles looked like the second coming of Kirk Cousins, completing 24 of 39 throws for 363 yards and three touchdowns that offset the three interceptions Maryland came away with.

Locksley said the plan was to force the Spartans to veer away from the run game and rely on Chiles to use his arm. With only one returning starter in the secondary (Trader), that strategy failed, and Locksley acknowledged that the coaches might have to keep one safety deep or use more players to rush opposing quarterbacks and force them to make quicker decisions.

“Some of the times, it didn’t look like we were in good coverage, and we gave up some big plays,” he said. “Those are some growing pains that I hate that we have to go through now. And I know for the people who support us, they don’t like to hear it, but those are necessary growing pains that some of these inexperienced players are going to have to go through. We’ve got to help them as coaches by figuring out how to protect them a little bit more.”

Trader said he and fellow safety Glendon Miller, who collected two interceptions in the game and has three in the first two games, have to support a young cornerback corps that includes freshmen Brandon Jacob and Kevyn Humes.

“I’ve got to do better, Glen has to do better to help these young corners gain confidence,” Trader said. “Not a lot of them have played the amount of ball we’ve played, and the speed of the game is really different. You will see a big difference from this loss to next week in terms of our secondary play.”