Maryland Football Has Left the Building

It's really bad when you write a "Maryland Football has Arrived" post and then have to immediately rescind it upon emerging from your two month disappearance. But hey, that's what happens when you go ahead and get beaten...by Temple...by 31...at home...in week 3...with Randy Edsall at the helm.

Now, let's be real, things haven't been ALL terrible. The games against Georgia Tech and (especially) Clemson and West Virginia could easily have been wins. Even with the blowouts against Florida State and Temple, this team could easily be 4-3 coming out of the tough part of the schedule and well in line to at least make another bowl. And, realistically, that should have been the expectation this season. Some people will say that winning at least 9 games again with Danny O'Brien back under center should have been no problem, but even with DOB (and Kenny Tate) back, the team lost plenty, including it's three most relevant receivers - Adrian Cannon and the Raven's duo of Torrey Smith and Laquan Williams - plus several key defensive players, most notably Alex Wujciak who had about six billion tackles in his four years here as the starter at the MIKE LB spot.

Of course, I'm going to stop right there before this seems like any kind of an excuse for how piss poor the Randy Edsall era has started. It began with Sarge hiring two coordinators that were on thin ice at their old schools, with one of those schools being Southern Mississippi. It continued with moving future first round pick Kenny Tate from his natural safety position to linebacker where it became clear that the smallish Tate was physically overmatched. Its first year will be punctuated in the winter with a recruiting class that currently ranks tenth in the league, behind even Wake Forest.

This really isn't anymore than a rant. The team started out with so much excitement, and now, no one cares. There are two home games left against North Carolina State and Wake, and those two games could be as poorly attended as any in the latter years of the Fridge. The team will need a minor miracle just to pull out another Military Bowl bid, which, even at 6-6, would not be a certainty.

I wanted to become a season ticket holder back in August, but now the incentive just isn't there. That's not to say I'm off the bandwagon or anything like that, but it's clearly not a good sign for the long term health of the program that would-be diehards aren't connecting with the program the way they should. What is most galling is that the Athletic Department replaced the Fridge because of a lack of excitement around the program and then immediately replaced him with someone seemingly incapable of generating any himself. I'm not still bitter that we didn't hire Mike Leach, but that didn't mean we had to find his polar opposite. Even James Franklin has VANDERBILT possibly on its way to a bowl game, and with him at the helm you can bet that Danny O'Brien wouldn't have had as poor a year as he's had so far.

Moral of the story - 11 days until hoops.