Special thanks to Matt Germack of Testudo Times for joining me to discuss Maryland’s roster on this week’s podcast:
This has been an eventful offseason for Maryland as they’re making major program transitions in just about every way. On the podcast, Matt and I discussed how head coach Locksley had broken “the Curse of the Fridge” — after Maryland unwisely fired alumnus Ralph Friedgen in 2010 and went through a decade of incompetent leadership afterwards with a 37% winning percentage to show for it — and had put
together a functioning coaching staff, leveraged local talent advantages, and was stringing together bowl wins and NFL draft picks. Through that, Locksley had held together a core group of staffers and minimized player departures, fending off what Matt called an impending resource problem.
That’s all broken open this offseason - the athletic department is being reshaped to “pure generate revenue mode” as Matt put it, the vast majority of the two-deep who’d gotten the Terrapins through this recent run have now graduated, transferred out, or been drafted, and Locksley has shaken up the staff by firing nearly all of the top-level coaches and restructuring the positional assistants. There are quite a few promising storylines to track for the future — Locksley has landed some big names in recruiting and for his coordinators, some of the portal additions are potentially win-right-away guys, and the kind of local skill talent on both sides of the ball that Midwestern Big Ten teams often don’t have access to — but massive rebuild projects in the trenches and what’s likely a developmental year for their phenom quarterback recruit mean this will likely be a transitional year that sets up what we might see for this iteration of the Terps in 2026 and 2027.
Offense
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Locksley relieved the offensive coordinator Josh Gattis of playcalling duties in the middle of last season and took over playcalling himself. Gattis had been in place since 2023, and I doubt his preferred passing scheme which uses the run game as setup that I’d seen at more rushing-oriented prior stops (Penn State, Alabama, Michigan) was going to be a great fit at Maryland until they get some big improvements in their offensive line, though the RPO and sideline shot mix they were using the last two years was a good fit for their talent. Locksley hired OC Hamilton, a longtime NFL passing game coach whose college time has been with Jim Harbaugh and David Shaw. That’s a very intriguing hire, he’s an old-school QB guru and has been out of work (I don’t know if the XFL counts as work) for the last couple years and I’m really interested to see how much of the RPO game we see or if this looks like an attempt to recreate Stanford in 2011.
The quarterback who got the Terps to those three consecutive bowl games in 2021 through 2023 (and still holds the Big Ten career passing record, a fact we agreed on the podcast demonstrates how against-type Locksley’s team has played in this league) was Taulia Tagovailoa. His backup in that time was Billy Edwards Jr, who got his shot at leading a similarly composed offense in the 2023 bowl game and the 2024 season after Tagovailoa went pro and he beat out North Carolina State transfer MJ Morris for the job.
I’d figured that Morris was brought in to start because he already had gotten half a dozen career starts due to a peculiar substitution history in Raleigh but retained several years of remaining eligibility, and that the offense would need his athleticism to replicate Tagovailoa’s ability to salvage plays by scrambling and improvising out of the pocket. Matt told me that probably was the staff’s thinking but also it was always going to be a competition with Edwards, and Morris just wasn’t developing while Edwards was ready to go with a big arm. The arm strength was always clear with Edwards, but his accuracy and touch wasn’t particularly well refined in 2024 and without the ability to extend plays as much as his predecessor Maryland’s NCAA passer rating collapsed, from Tagovailoa’s career 146.1 to Edwards’ 130.1, a full standard deviation.
Matt stuck up for Edwards on the podcast, blaming most of the dropoff on the offensive line, and predicted a big season for him as the new starter at Wisconsin (the two teams see each other as their conference opener in September, should be fun). It’s true that the line got marginally worse in personnel from 2023 to 2024, but the effective pocket breakdown rate was basically identical (the run game was more affected by the line changes, particularly 2nd & 3rd downs when they really needed it) and it’s very clear from the fundamental stats and down & distance situational analysis that QB accuracy was the culprit in passing efficiency and explosiveness falling off, with 2nd & medium and 3rd & short opportunities falling off a cliff by nearly 30 percentage points going from Tagovailoa to Edwards while everything else stayed fairly similar. It seems clear that Maryland won’t get above water offensively until they make some major strides on the line, and since that’s going to be a multiple-year project, to me the premium in the short term is on QB athleticism.
In addition to Edwards transferring out, Morris and a couple of developmental guys, Cameron Edge and Jayden Sauray, hit the portal as well. That means the only returning scholarship quarterback is redshirt freshman mid 3-star #12 QB K. Martin, and Matt said we haven’t really seen much from him and he doesn’t really figure into the competition right now other than a depth piece.
The three additions into the room are #15 QB J. Hamilton, a low 3-star recruit and son of the coordinator, #6 QB J. Martin who transferred in from UCLA, and the “talk of the offseason” recruit mid 4-star #7 QB Washington. Evidently Locksley and the whole program has everything pinned on Washington (Matt was replete with stories about his recruitment and media availabilities, going so far as to say that if Washington transfers out Locksley would be fired), but he’s unlikely to be a day-one starter.
That will probably go to the UCLA transfer Martin (unrelated to the returning redshirt freshman), who was a low 4-star in the 2022 cycle and has showed a lot of athleticism in practices according to friend of the series Michael Hanna of the B Team but wasn’t refined enough to break in until he was forced to start last year against Penn State due to an injury to the Bruins’ starter. Matt and I have both watched that game and agreed that Martin showed a lot of poise considering he had an NFL 1st rounder breathing down his neck the entire game - I think he’s got the athletic profile to fit what Maryland needs right now, though how he’s developed as a passer and how he fits into the new scheme (or what that scheme is) remains undetermined because that was a single-game sample with such a skew of bad protection and lethal pass rush.
It’s an interesting question as to how the backup situation would work. Everybody except the UCLA transfer is a freshman who hasn’t played. Hamilton is the coach’s kid, which could mean he’s a savvy operator ahead of his years or it could mean he just landed a spot as a favor. Washington is clearly the future of the position and Matt suggested he could even be the starter by the end of the year, but the whole point of starting someone else when he’s a true freshman is to not hinder his development by playing him prematurely, so throwing him in if Martin goes down would defeat the purpose. Matt bet on Washington because his demeanor struck him as so mature.
I spent quite some time in last Summer’s preview breaking down the history of Maryland’s running back room, from their huge rotation peaking in 2021 down to the three-back system they’ve used the last three years, and the upside-down efficiency to frequency figures with which backs have been getting the carries vs which backs should have been. Matt summed it up nicely by saying that they’ve been unsuccessfully trying to recreate Roman Hemby’s 2022 season for the last three years (with a funny and accurate story about needing a ref to throw a key block for him last year). Hemby has transferred out, while Colby McDonald, who analytically has been the best back all four years since 2021 but had his carries cut back every year, has graduated.
The three returners are #25 RB Ray, who was the second back behind Hemby last year, plus #17 RB McLaurin and #20 RB D. Williams from the 2024 cycle who got some garbage time work as true freshmen last year but nothing during meaningful play. They’ve taken no transfers here — the only such position on the offense and one of only two on the entire team — just a couple of prep recruits in the same mid-to-high 3-star (~.87) talent range as the returners.
Ray figures to be the lead back, he was getting substantial carries as a true freshman in 2023 and his carry count continued to increase through the end of the 2024 season. His per-carry success rate was awful last year, 39.2%, worse than Hemby’s 47.2% (and way lower than McDonald’s 61%, but that’s been true of every back for four years), but Ray put up a respectable 4.92 adjusted YPC despite that low efficiency. I’ve always liked Ray’s tape and as Matt and I discussed on the podcast, he could do a lot of damage behind a better offensive line, he’s just not a very big back and hasn’t shown he can be his own blocker - if he can locate a hole and squeeze through it he can get a longer run, there’s a ton of potential, but I think he’s more sensitive than backs of other builds to the quality of the line and I have a hard time seeing much better production in 2025. Matt said that Williams is likely to be the second back, which makes sense as he got the majority of the garbage time run last year and is built as the bigger of the two 2024 guys.
All three of the tight ends Maryland used in 2024 have transferred out - Preston Howard, Leron Husbands, and Dylan Wade. Howard and Wade were categorized as TEs but at about 6’2” and 240 lbs they were each used more like Y-receivers than true all-purpose guys, while Husbands didn’t get a single target but was on the field extensively as a blocker at closer to 250 lbs.
The returners are #16 TE Haughton from the 2022 cycle and #89 TE A. Szymanski from 2023. I haven’t seen either in meaningful play at Maryland, though Haughton is built like Howard and Wade (though even skinnier, he’s currently listed under 230 lbs) and got a couple garbage time catches last year. Szymanski has by far the biggest dimensions of any TE I’ve seen since I’ve been charting Maryland, 6’5” and 266 lbs, but I’ve never seen him on the field.
They’ve taken a true freshman who arrives in the Fall and will no doubt redshirt, as well as Georgia State transfer #9 TE Fleming who was very productive with the Panthers last year. Fleming is listed with a similar build to Howard and Wade, about 235 lbs, and Matt and I agreed he’ll probably be used in the same way. There’s no reason to doubt Fleming will be a big target in Maryland’s offense in 2025, but unless he can block much bigger than his frame suggests (or Szymanski surprises by being playable; Matt said it wasn’t promising) the offense is going to be effectively in four-wide configuration all year. It’s surprising that this room isn’t bigger and I’m very curious how an old hand like Hamilton plans to make this work - as Matt said, the line just isn’t going to be able to operate without blocking help and Hamilton running the Air Raid doesn’t seem like his wheelhouse.
Maryland has put its chips on a great wide receiver group since Locksley arrived, and perhaps more importantly, giving themselves multiple options each time they needed to reload since the starters haven’t always turned out to be the obvious favorites. That looks to continue in 2025 with another reload - they lose their top producers to the NFL and a trio of 2023 developmental guys bounced, but they brought in a couple of great looking transfers and have some promising talent returning as well as some very intriguing fresh faces.
The main targets the last couple of seasons have been Tai Felton and Kaden Prather, big outside receivers (although roped into taking some inside catch-and-run passes in last year’s offense that weren’t really their game just to try and exploit their athletic advantage over a lot of Big Ten secondaries) who got close to 200 combined meaningful targets between them in 2024. Felton was drafted in the 3rd round by the Vikings and Prather in the 7th by the Bills.
There was a big falloff to the next tier of pass catchers, which put together still added up to fewer than Felton’s alone. About two-thirds of those went to whichever TE was on the field, Howard or Wade, and the remaining third mostly went to #5 WR O. Smith. He was a shorter slot guy but on a per-target basis played a fairly unique and valuable role in the 2024 offense because he had great hands for catching very quick passes that Edwards would rifle out (sometimes lacking pinpoint accuracy; the QB did better throwing rainbows along the sideline and letting Felton or Prather defeat coverage and adjust on them). Smith’s per-target efficiency was the highest on the team at 57.1%, though his adjusted YPT on these shorter throws was just mediocre at 7.34. Smith figures to have an expanded role in the 2025 offense as the most experienced returner with valuable hands and the only viable shorter guy … besides perhaps the intriguing true freshman low 4-star #10 WR Z. Smith Matt suggested as a potential gadget player.
The other returner who got some play was 2022 low 4-star #4 WR Knotts. He had a terrible per-target success rate, but I think that was product of misuse - he’s a tall flanker who should have been getting those rainbow passes, but there was no room in the 2024 offense for that with Felton and Prather available so all of his reps came inside and he just wasn’t able to handle Edwards’ heat the way Smith could. Matt told me that Locksley has been in Knotts’ corner from the get-go (and has given him a nickname, apparently) so there’s certainly some potential that he steps out from the shadow of the NFL departures and plays a more natural role for him in 2025. But as Matt put it, “I’m not doubting it, but I’ll believe it when I see it.”
Maryland took a huge 2023 recruiting class at receiver and it’s looking like they’ll get maybe one playable guy out of that group, #11 WR Manning, and even with him Matt said he’ll probably be behind Smith in the slot as a backup at most until later seasons. The rest of that class either switched positions (Haughton), transferred out this offseason without really seeing the field (Ezekiel Avit, Josh Richards, Braeden Wisloski), or have generated no attention (#21 WR S. Williams). Matt also thought the two freshmen who redshirted last year, #8 WR White and #81 WR Powell-Wonson need some more development before they play.
Beyond Knotts, Maryland has taken three more additions as replacement options on the outside for Felton and Prather: #1 WR Farooq who transferred from Oklahoma, Juco Jordan Scott who initially signed with Florida State but recently flipped to Maryland, and #84 WR Webb who transferred from Tennessee. Farooq was one of Dillon Gabriel’s favorite targets at Oklahoma and put up excellent numbers through 2023, but missed almost all of 2024 with an injury. Webb was also primarily productive in 2023 as a redshirt freshman and looked to be rising in 2024 which I charted for playoff purposes, but got sidelined in favor of a much less effective G5 transfer in one of the Vols’ many irrational decisions. Scott is absolutely enormous at 6’7” and Matt said he can really run, which would make him a game-changing body if he’s for real, though he never played at Florida State so we haven’t been able to see his film.
This is a pretty good looking group of receivers. It’s most likely going to be Farooq and Webb on the outside and the older Smith on the inside, but they have options in Knotts and Scott for the former, and Manning and the younger Smith for the latter, and even more depth pieces who are height balanced with the 6’2” White and 5’11” Powell-Wonson. For a group that had so little production in 2024, much less in a Terps uniform, I’d be pretty confident that they’ll post some top flight numbers in 2025 simply because the talent looks legit and the balance is on-point - that’s been Maryland’s strong suit under Locksley and there’s no reason to think it’ll change. The bottleneck has been elsewhere.
Maryland played eleven offensive linemen at one point or another during meaningful play in 2024, tied for the most I charted last year. Some was injury related but much of it was experimentation to find better options for was a staggeringly poor performance, and multiple true freshmen rotating in prior to garbage time for experience which struck me as inadvisable. There’s a chance this line stabilizes in 2025 — the starting group Matt and I penciled in would be halfway decent, if they went with the right version and stuck with it — but I’m not optimistic that they’ll get it right in the first place or that they’ll resist tinkering as Matt intimated that the directive to do so comes from Locksley himself, and told me that new OL coach Wroblewski was just the old coach’s assistant who got a promotion for reasons that defy comprehension.
Departures from last year’s playing group include left tackle Andre Roye, left guard (and converted nose tackle) Isaac Bunyun, another left guard Kyle Long, a third left guard Tamarus Walker, center Josh Kaltenberger, and two of the three rotational right tackles Terez Davis and Marcus Dumervil. Kaltenberger signed a UDFA with the Chargers and Bunyun graduated, but the other five transferred out, as did two guys who didn’t play, Deandre Duffus and Kevin Kalonji.
The two starters who return are #66 RG Bah and #71 RT Herron, and the two true freshmen who got some backup time who return as true sophomores are #61 C Hershey and #50 OT T. Szymanski (Hershey and Davis were intentionally rotated in for experience, though it backfired as Davis transferred out, while Szymanski, the brother of the TE, came in due to a brief injury). Herron was a Division-II transfer but proved to be capable at the FBS level, despite all the odd rotation at his position. It was bizarre that RG was the one position at which there was no substitution because Bah has had some of the lowest blocking grades I’ve ever seen and I don’t think he’s playable at this level (Matt instantly and quite vocally agreed on the podcast, at one point I started to feel guilty about how much we were piling on the guy). The one other returner of significance is senior Buffalo transfer #74 LG Wright, who unfortunately took a season-ending injury after transferring in last cycle during Fall camp, as he was set to be a starter. Matt said he doesn’t have confirmation that Wright is back to 100% but due to the amount of time since the injury he’s betting on it and has him as starting LG.
Maryland has taken a dozen prep recruits over the last two cycles. Eleven of them have very similar mid 3-star talent ratings, but the last, #70 OL Gilchrist, stands apart as a mid 4-star and Matt said he was very enthusiastic about the local prospect. Given Locksley’s inclination to rotate true freshmen, we both think there’s a high likelihood that Gilchrist plays early, but the really intriguing possibility is that he goes in at right guard from the beginning and benches Bah. I think that would be a better option — I’m not sure it’s possible for it to be worse — but the staff seemed to show a completely irrational favoritism for Bah last year so who knows.
The two portal additions are both FCS starters at tackle, #76 OT Perry from Central Connecticut and more recently Carlos Moore from Elon. I haven’t been able to watch their tape (a running theme on the podcast is that all of Maryland’s extensive FCS acquisitions this cycle have been from the East coast, and West coast FCS tape is much better represented in my film library), but Matt has Perry penciled in for left tackle starter while he thinks Moore is a backup option for the tackles and Herron will keep his starting job on the right side.
With Hershey apparently training to be the center last year (although it’s uncertain who his backup is now), the lineup that looked best to Matt and I would be Perry-Wright-Hershey-Gilchrist-Herron, with Moore as the tackle depth and Bah as the guard depth. That would be a pretty good mix of experience and talent, appropriate body types at each spot, and only one starter right out of the portal … there are some risks but there’d be a pretty good shot at viability, if they could only stick to it. Matt said he thinks the staff will go with Bah at RG and he’s probably right, but perhaps Gilchrist will prove impossible to keep off the field.
Defense
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Maryland had been running a somewhat unique odd front in the Big Ten under Brian Williams, the defensive line coach who came in with Locksley and had also taken over as coordinator for the last four seasons I’d been charting the team. They had very specific roles for each of the three down linemen and very rarely deviated from them schematically, getting all the playcalling flexibility out of the two OLBs in a double-eagle configuration and two ILBs who were ahead of the curve for being longer, leaner pass-playing types, and switching out backers rather than linemen when they went to a nickel on the back end.
I generally considered Maryland to be punching above their weight class defensively under Williams - they didn’t have the recruiting pull to get the truly elite edge rush they really needed for a top shelf defense, but statistical analysis showed that their savvy veterans in the front consistently overperformed in run stuffing, they were producing highly productive linebackers that better resourced programs kept poaching, and they kept churning out NFL defensive backs. They ran aground in 2024 when that year’s crop of new DBs turned out to below the usual high standard, but in my opinion that’s the worst that can be fairly said of the defensive management given the program constraints.
Williams has left for the DC job at Jacksonville State this offseason; Matt said he did so ahead of the other staff changes so it’s possible he was hired away, but he also said there was a feeling that Williams was going to be fired if he hadn’t gotten out of Dodge so perhaps he had some calls out well in advance. At any rate, Locksley has hired DC Monachino who was most recently North Carolina’s DL coach but will be taking the OLB remit at Maryland, and has a 20-year background as an NFL defensive coach. Matt said he expects the defense to look similar to Monachino’s three-down system he ran as DC with the Colts and so there won’t be much in the way of structural changes.
The rest of the defensive coaching staff changes look like a big game of musical chairs (one of the reasons Matt and I started talking about Maryland’s resource situation, an interesting conversation especially about the basketball team) with assistant DL coach Liuget getting a promotion to on-field, DB coach Thomas moving over from OLBs, and ILB coach Spavital moving from DBs. The only person who actually left, other than Williams, is former ILB coach Lance Thompson … who went to North Carolina to take over for Monachino!
The defensive two-deep is looking at an almost total rebuild in 2025, with nine out of eleven starters departing (and one of the two returning starters will probably move positions or lose his job entirely), with major losses among the frequently used rotational players as well. The departures are most significant at the line of scrimmage and get less so moving up levels of the defense - all five starters on the line of scrimmage plus both of the most frequently used rotational down-linemen are gone, at the second level they lose both starting off-ball backers but return the rest of a large rotation with a lot of experience, and in the secondary they lose the two best starters and a couple promising younger guys but it was such a poorly performing backfield that a shakeup is probably for the best.
The three fist-down starters for multiple seasons were Jordan Phillips at nose, Tommy Akingbesote as what I’ve been calling the DT (usually at a 2i or 3-tech), and Quashon Fuller on the other side at what I think of as the DE (usually a 5-tech though sometimes bunched in closer). Phillips was drafted in the 5th by the Dolphins and Akingbesote in the 7th by the Cowboys. When either of them rotated off the field, though that wasn’t very often, they’d be replaced by Lavon Johnson, but he’s now transferred out. Fuller rotated much more frequently, most often with Taizse Johnson (who Matt pointed out was practically a starter and should be considered part of this very technically sound group of seniors) who’s graduated as well, but also a bit with underclassmen #46 DL Fontus and #39 DL Owens last year. There was only one other scholarship defensive lineman in the room in 2024, freshman #99 DL Nicolas who was redshirting.
There are five transfers and four prep recruits into the defensive line room. I have to admit that sorting through this was quite a challenge because Maryland’s roster doesn’t separate them into their specific positions, lists weights of which I’m highly skeptical (two freshmen and three transfers have weight changes of +/- 45 lbs compared to their last school, which is an awful lot of scrapple and lake trout for a couple months), and wasn’t updated until after Matt and I spoke so we missed talking about one of the new additions and I caught up with him about it on email. Three of the transfers are from FCS schools on which I have no tape, the fourth is from an ostensibly Power program but hasn’t played yet, and the last played at a G5 school last year and I have a couple of his games charted but was in an even-surface defense and I’m not sure where he fits in the Maryland’s odd front.
Here’s my best guess after catching up with Matt: I think they can avoid playing the true freshmen and go with the returners and transfers, but the most likely freshman to play is #57 DL B. Jenkins as he’s the low 4-star out of a group of mid 3-stars and his prep tape shows he could go in at nose as a space-eater (amazingly he’s grown two inches and put on 50 lbs since high school, according to the roster). The transfers who are most likely at nose are #44 DL Starlings from UNC, a low 4-star from 2023 who hasn’t played yet, and #98 DL E. Thomas also from 2023 who played 4 games as a freshman and was a starter last year in the FCS. A transfer who could swing from NT to DT is #10 DL Rice, who was a rotational DT in Ohio’s four-down front (actually they use a stand-up end but it’s an even surface and Rice was not over center) after transferring in from starting for two years at a Div-II, which is where he landed after redshirting at West Virginia in 2021.
The two guys I think are going to be DTs only — that is, not move to 0-tech or 5-tech — are the returner Nicolas and FCS transfer #50 DL E. Moore. Both were 2024 mid 3-stars but Nicolas redshirted while Moore played his way into a starting role by the end of last year as a true freshman. Rice could play in this position, and Fontus is another swing guy in the other direction - so far we’d seen him at DE because of his length and because they already had a very big guy in Lavon Johnson for the interior backup, but Matt and I discussed Fontus moving inside if need be because of his weight.
In addition to the possibility of Fontus just staying put at DE, I think there are two linemen who fit into that position: the returner Owens (he hasn’t been a very high impact rotational player; he’d gotten close to a eighty meaningful reps last year and about sixty the year before as a redshirt freshman but Matt had completely forgotten Owens was on the team when I asked after him) and the FCS transfer #91 DL S. Smith about whom neither Matt nor I could find out anything other than that his dimensions and stats from his last school looked appropriate for DE. However, Maryland has re-listed Smith with some truly massive weight gain that would size him out of this role, and if that’s accurate it’s hard to make the numbers work for the rest of the line without activating a lot of the flexibility that they’ll need to hedge their bets or dipping into their true freshmen, hence my skepticism.
The hinkiness with Maryland’s weights and measures notwithstanding, that works out to each spot having one experienced FCS transfer (NT: Thomas, DT: Moore, DE: Smith) and one less experienced P4 guy (NT: Starlings, DT: Nicolas, DE: Owens). They also have two very experienced linemen who could swing from DT, one inside to nose in Rice, the other outside to end in Fontus. That’s eight guys from whom to find three starters and a couple of backups, and four freshmen for emergency options. Assuming the balance is right and the sizes aren’t wildly off (which I can’t verify with tape and I’m giving the roster the side-eye, so that’s not a certainty), the body count works such that they should be able to field a playable line without problems.
Whether they’ll be any good is another matter; this is a rebuild from the ground up with a unit that’s never played together comprised entirely of linemen who’ve never been Power conference starters and without the DC and DL coach who assembled their predecessors. We’ll just have to wait and see if the linemen Monachino puts together can hold serve with the vets who held these positions down for the last several years … this is a lot of unknowns.
The outside linebackers also lose both starters who’d been mainstays for several years and technically very sound, though not very flashy in terms of havoc stats - Donnell Brown has graduated and Kellen Wyatt transferred out (to Indiana … the backup d-lineman Johnson went to Texas and a starting linebacker got poached by Auburn; the defensive front had the highest concentration of what looks like poaching of their developed players on the team, whereas the secondary is almost entirely young guys dropping a level. The offense had a couple of arguable poachings but a much greater absolute number of departures almost all of which are cycle outs, which dilutes the effect).
However, the OLBs did more rotation of the backups, both of whom return, plus they’re bringing online some higher rated talent, and there’s a pretty good chance that this unit at least holds steady in production and may well improve havoc generation. The backups in 2024 were both mid 3-stars, #3 OLB Reddick and #42 OLB Samuels who got a surprising amount of run for how young they were, Reddick was a true freshman whom the staff is very high on and Samuels was technically a true sophomore because he burned his redshirt in 2023 playing on special teams but hadn’t really seen the field from scrimmage then so 2024 was his first real season.
They’d been taking their time with a couple of 2023 low 4-stars, Neeo Avery who was dealing with a torn ACL but got on the field for eight games last year, and Dylan Gooden who only played two games and hit the portal. Matt told me the staff is pretty excited about Avery being good to go because of his ideal length for the job, as well as the redshirt freshman low 4-star transfer they got from Florida State #56 OLB Holmes. We haven’t seen them play much yet, but they constitute an on-paper talent upgrade and a clear (I can just look at photos for this) leverage upgrade on what they’ve had before with both at 6’6” or over and great arm length vs all other current or previous OLBs not quite making 6’4”. It’s also evidently been a point of emphasis in recruiting lately, as both of the prep recruits mid 4-star #9 OLB Mathis and mid 3-star #87 OLB Recker also come in at 6’6”-plus, though I think they’ll need to pack on some muscle before they get to playing weight.
In last Summer’s preview I used Maryland’s new-school rubric on off-ball linebacker body types to predict which guys out of their big 2023 rotation would make it out of the chaos caused by the loss of their most talented starter to Michigan - lining up the rangy Caleb Wheatland for a promotion in 2024 next to returning starter Ruben Hyppolite, with the young but even longer #1 ILB Wingate (then wearing jersey #16) for a primary rotational role, and even calling an experienced but shorter old-school neckroll backer’s transfer out a week before it happened.
Hyppolite was drafted at the end of the season, in the 4th round by the Bears, while Wheatland is now off to Auburn as mentioned earlier. This is the only position on the defense in which the staff has taken no transfers; it seems they continue to be happy with their developmental pipeline here (I believe that Maryland has only taken one ILB in the history of the portal, and he was a one-year backup in 2022). The returners from last year’s main rotation are Wingate and another 2023 backer, #31 ILB Harris, as well as both of the then-true freshmen who played in nearly every game, #35 ILB K. James and #23 ILB Key. Flowers (Matt mentioned that a walk-on in this unit, #55 ILB Kei. Flowers, is his twin brother, which was interesting to hear because there’s a four-inch height difference).
Those four should be the rotation in 2025, with high 3-star prep recruits #30 ILB Daniels and #32 ILB C. Smith or depth. I should think that Wingate has a starting job locked down as he’s been the most productive, and is by far the longest in the room and that’s proven to be a good guide so far. How the rest of it goes is pretty interesting for the second starter next to Wingate and therefore which two stay as rotational guys.
Harris was part of the main rotation last year since he was older than the other two, but not as productive as Wingate, and while he was a low 4-star he’s the smallest of the room at 6’1” and 218 lbs. On the podcast, Matt really went to bat for Harris, praising his speed and play diagnosis and saying he thinks that Harris could end up being the best linebacker of the group (though in a recent email Matt said the staff has been touting Wingate more). James is the next biggest at 6’3”, but he’s a mid 3-star, played the least, and hasn’t generated as much buzz. I’ll bet on Flowers (the bigger one) as the goldilocks - 6’2”, high 3-star, played in 11 games last year and some of it in meaningful time that I watched and he looked pretty promising as a true freshman.
At any rate, they have four relatively experienced homegrown backers plus a couple of young depth pieces who each look like good-to-great body type fits for the system, in a proven developmental pipeline. They should probably be just fine here, and the only question is if the Terps put together the funds to keep them from getting poached by a better-heeled program again next offseason.
Maryland had gone through significant changes to their secondary lineup for each of the last three seasons since they’d kept putting players into the NFL, and up until last year they’d successfully reloaded every time. But while they did have a couple of pros in last year’s secondary — strong safety Dante Trader was drafted in the 5th by the Dolphins and nickel / box safety Glendon Miller signed a UDFA with the Chiefs — they lost both those guys for several games with injuries as well as three of the more promising DBs, while a couple of the older guys they’d developed plus a transfer they’d brought in to start just didn’t pan out and became the first disappointments for the Terps backfield in quite a while.
Between the injuries and extensive experimental position swapping throughout the year, I charted fifteen DBs getting significant meaningful playing time in 2024, a third of whom were true freshmen. I don’t think it’s fair to write the freshmen off yet, but the quality of play that this all added up to was very poor, at or near the very bottom of the conference in every metric from charting I use to measure secondary performance from coverage to tackling to QB deterrence. This was despite having a couple of NFL players and some promising guys who got hurt and then transferred out … and of course, now those guys have left so the Terps have to do it all over again.
The transfers out are extensive, most dropping to the G5 level although a couple getting picked up by Power programs after missing much of the year with injury: Jonathan Akins, Perry Fisher, Chantz Harley, Brandon Jacob, Tayvon Nelson, Kevis Thomas, and Lionell Whitaker. For completeness’ sake, Rex Fleming, a super senior who Matt mentioned was mostly a special teamer but got pressed into some backup play, has graduated, and Mykel Morman, a redshirt freshman who didn’t play has left the football team to focus on track & field.
There are six returners who played last year, the most important of which for understanding what happened being #22 CB Huskey who was brought in from Bowling Green to start at outside corner but was ineffective there, then was moved to starting free safety. But he was but eventually demoted behind the backup he was rotating with, #13 DB Scruggs, to the point where I would call Scruggs the starting free safety in the totality of the data, and the only returner for 2025 who I think has a secure job. To try and solve the vacancy at corner and relieve the pressure on the existing starter and backup (Fisher and Harley, who weren’t great to begin with), the staff opened up the rotation at both the outside corner spots to include two then true-freshmen, #4 CB Humes (wearing #11 last year) and #27 CB Roland, who as Matt correctly noted were liabilities on the field, but it’s too soon to dismiss them. Deeper in the rotation and as a response to injuries were another couple of freshmen, #21 DB J. Jenkins, who I saw filling in as backup nickel after Whitaker went down, and #26 DB McIntosh who I think was going to redshirt but was pushed into backup play due to injuries to Jacob and Thomas at safety.
They’ve brought in three portal additions: #14 CB Glasker who was Wake Forest’s starting corner the last two years though he missed a few games midseason both times, #6 DB Joyner who was an extensively used backup safety as a true freshman in 2023 then a starting safety in 2024 at Arkansas State, and #7 DB G. Edwards who played eight games as a redshirt freshman as a rotational safety at a Division-II school last year and briefly transferred to an FCS school this Winter before flipping to Maryland in the Spring window.
Matt and I arrived at the same conclusion for what the starting lineup in the secondary would look like, at least initially before some more positional experimentation probably sets in again (actually, re-listening to the podcast in the editing bay, we were always on the same page about this, but I misheard him on something at the outset and so spent the entire segment asking somewhat superfluous though I think still clarifying questions with which he was patient). We both agreed that Huskey isn’t playable as an outside corner for coverage purposes but is a big body with very similar dimensions as Miller had, and would make a suitable nickel or hybrid backer when the defense goes to that configuration. Jenkins is the more coverage oriented nickel at 5’11”.
Scruggs should keep his starting free safety job (or get it officially, depending on how you look at it) while Joyner was probably brought in to start at strong safety. Edwards and McIntosh are the likely safety backups, with 2023 low 3-star #18 DB A. Moore and low 4-star prep recruit #33 DB Delhomme as depth. Likewise, Glasker was brought in to start at one of the outside corner spots. They’ve then got the four 2024 corners who stayed (plus 2025 mid 3-star #12 CB Shipps, I suppose, though they’d probably like to avoid repeating last year’s freshman debacle) from which to find one starter and a couple of playable backups, which is viable math but I’m hard pressed to identify who they’d be from tape. Those are Humes and Roland who got run last year but would need to take a big step forward to be assets, or borderline 4-star #2 CB B. Lee and mid 3-star #15 CB Irvin who didn’t get meaningful play … and I don’t know what that says about them, good bad or ugly.
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