MIKE BURKE
Allegany Communications Sports
Maryland’s 27-10 win at Wisconsin on Saturday was huge, and the most important Maryland football win in some time.
Granted, Wisconsin doesn’t appear to be the Wisconsin we’ve grown accustomed to seeing, and the fans at Camp Randall Stadium certainly took every opportunity to remind Badgers head coach Luke Fickell of that. Yet for the young 4-0 Terps, and, boy, are they ever young, that’s Bo Callahan’s problem, not theirs.
Nobody qualifies every win the other Big Ten schools pile up at Maryland’s expense with, “Yeah, but Maryland’s down.” The street runs both ways, and while it wasn’t a win over Ohio State, Michigan or Penn State, it was still a dominating win as a 10.5-point underdog over a brand Big Ten program in front of one of the largest and loudest fanbases in the conference in a hallowed Big Ten venue.
It also comes on the heels of a 4-8 season in which Maryland went 1-8 in the Big Ten, which, short memories being what they are, erased all evidence of the Terps’ three consecutive bowl-winning seasons that preceded it.
Headed into the game, the Terps seemed incredulous that they were not only a 10-plus point underdog, but an underdog by any count (I took them on my card for Recreational Use Only).
Call it the naive brashness of youth, but Maryland seemed very confident they were going to win, and it didn’t take long into the first quarter on Saturday to understand why they felt that way.
Maryland’s win wasn’t an upset, it was a trip to the woodshed. The Terps were the better and more assertive team from the beginning, and their overall team speed, particularly on defense, was striking.
And it was Maryland’s true freshman quarterback Malik Washington looking like the seasoned veteran rather than former Terp Billy Edwards Jr., who started for the Badgers but was lost after a few plays to injuries, and his replacement Danny O’Neil, who, thanks to the Maryland defense, resembled a human crash dummy for much of the day.
While Washington was becoming the second true freshman in the past 20 years to pass for 250 yards or more in each of his first four games, the Maryland defense was hounding O’Neil and forcing the Badgers to go 3-for-17 on third downs.
Maryland’s defense, led by junior linebacker Daniel Wingate, freshman linebacker/end Zahir Mathis and freshman defensive end Sidney Stewart, is fast and physical. While the offense was adjusting to the six dropped passes Terps receivers committed (a problem), the defense and special teams set the tone of the game, and truthfully, the 20-0 halftime lead should have been by more because Maryland was clearly a better team than Wisconsin.
Head coach Michael Locksley said over the summer that Wingate reminds him of former Terps great EJ Henderson with his ability to go sideline to sideline and always be around the ball. Might as well throw former Terps great D’Qwell Jackson’s name in there as well.
Stewart leads the Big Ten in tackles for loss, Mathis blocked the field goal attempt on Wisconsin’s first possession to put the Terps in the driver’s seat early, and freshman safety Messiah Delhomme blocked a punt for the second week in a row.
As Locksley said after the game, there is still much to fix, and the Terps will have a bye week to work on it. While Washington has proven to be ahead of his years, the offense needs work, as does (as always) some on-field decision-making. But what sometimes seems to be poor decisions can be the result of aggressiveness you like to see.
Still, the Terps enter the bye week at 4-0 and 1-0 in the conference with good Saturday night reviews from the national media and a positive buzz amongst its fanbase, that hopefully will begin to buy what Locksley’s been selling; because right now, while it’s just one conference game, it looks like it can be an excellent product.
It all centers around Washington, the highly sought-after quarterback who stayed home to play at Maryland, because it’s a star quarterback, particularly a local one, particularly a freshman, who can elevate a program both on and off the field, amongst media, the fans and, most importantly, recruits, who might want to stay home as well, but who want to play immediately.
With this year’s team flooded with talented underclassmen, recruits see that Michael Locksley is a man of his word.
It’s as Lefty Driesell told John Lucas the high-school recruit when Lucas asked him if he could play at Maryland as a freshman the first year freshmen would be eligible to play: “Son … I don’t care if you’re blind. If you can shoot, you’re gonna play.”
Anyone, though, with visions of Maryland becoming last year’s Indiana dancing in their heads should have those visions exit stage left. That’s not going to happen. There will still be bumps along the road, and Maryland still needs to prove it can win some big games.
But don’t let anyone say that Saturday’s win at Wisconsin wasn’t a big win, because it was. And it was a big deal, because it gave Terps fans and recruits, and a national television audience, a good look at what just might be.
Mike Burke writes about sports and other stuff for Allegany Communications. He began covering sports for the Prince George’s Sentinel in 1981 and joined the Cumberland Times-News sports staff in 1984, serving as sports editor for over 30 years. Contact him at [email protected]. Follow him on X @MikeBurkeMDT