Saturday, September 06, 2008

Middle Tennessee State 24, Maryland 14

I probably should have waited until Sunday to post this but I'm too worked up and since it is our sixth wedding anniversary tomorrow, I don't want to spoil that by recapping this mess.

This loss tonight was an embarassment, period. Maryland lost to the 110th ranked team in NCAA Division 1 football. Badly. MTSU flat out spanked the Terps and full credit to them for putting the hammer to the Terps. This is easily the worst game in coach Ralph Friedgen's eight years here. The Terps were not prepared at all, they had no game plan and no adjustments were made to stop MTSU. Everyone involved in the Maryland football program should be embarrassed by this display of ineptitude tonight. No one on the coaching staff had a clue what to do to stop MTSU. No one! Terrible play calling on both sides of the ball.

The Terps are now 1-1 with California (2-0) coming to Byrd Stadium next Saturday at noon. I'm expecting Cal to just march up and down the field on their way to a rout. I've lost that much confidence watching the Terps the past two weeks.

The Good: Darrius Heywood-Bey 3 catches, 88 yards, 1TD. Da'Rel Scott 12 carries, 127 yards, 1 TD

The Bad & The Ugly: Everything else.

Good night.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

I must point out that Ralph, in his post-game radio interview with Jon Claiborne, owned up to his responsibility for the MTSU loss. He repeatedly said "this is my fault, I am to blame for this embarrassment".

Rather than eating humble pie or blaming others, how about taking a hard look at oneself and how this continues to happen, and FIX the problems.

If it takes 2 - 3 years before a QB can learn and be productive in your offense, CHANGE YOUR FRIGGIN Offense...

It is ridiculous that a rookie NFL QB can come in and lead his team to victory (Joe Flacco), while at Maryland we can't put a QB on the field until 3 years of learning the playbook!

Get some players on the defensive side who have the Merriman, D'Qwell, EJ and Starks mentality and turn them loose!

Quit with the passive - keep everything in front of us --- defensive approach.

GO FOR IT like you did the 1st 3 years of your tenure!

That is all!

Anonymous said...

Enough is enough with these early season debacles. At what point does he say "For the LOVE OF GOD...I am doing something wrong, we always struggle early in the season, this is my fault"

I do think that his lack of a reasonable handling of the QB situation caused this team to have two terrible efforts in a row.

Just uninspired performances, something that was never lacking in his early years.

Anonymous said...

Ralph won his first few years because he had guys like Taffe and Blackney as coordinators.

Since they left, he hasn't done anything because he changed from being gutsy and aggressive on both sides of the ball to being afraid to make a mistake. Ralph was given far too much credit for winning in his early years here.

maryjanejeff said...

I think the Terps fared a little better today. I watched most of the game, quite deceiving final score I must say.

maryjanejeff said...

whoops. I don't have a dog in the hunt, but the Terps were beneficiaries of a very questionable non-safety call on Scott, who was stopped a yard into the end zone. As the half and then the game unfolded, the missing two points were irrelevant, to Maryland's credit. Great win all around. Conference play next week?

Bill-DC said...

Home game to Eastern Michigan at 1:00 next week, then ACC the rest of the way starting at Clemson on 9/27.

Hard to tell re: Scott from where I was sitting in Section 19, which was the other end zone. Forward progress perhaps?

I've got my most of my thoughts collected for the Cal game and I'll get them out shortly after I review them.

Much, much happier tone than last week. I was really impressed with the offensive and defensive game plans today. The D was a little gassed at the end and it was a classic example of why I dislike the prevent defense.

Worst thing to come out of the game was the Terps need a reliable kicker as Egekeze missed a 27 yarder and is 0-5 this season.

Stay tuned for more and thanks for spotting that the Examiner picked up some of last week's rant from the MTSU game. I got a kick out of seeing that.