Grading Out Maryland’s Performance Against Florida State

We’ve had a night to digest what happened in Tallahassee, and it ain’t pretty. Maryland got blown out by the Florida State Seminoles, and looked too woefully under prepared and under talented to hope to deal with FSU. There were a few positives, which we’ll run through in a second, but a whole lot of negatives. Let’s hand out our weekly Testudos.

Five Testudos :

Quintin McCree. We don’t know what changed between last week and this week for the redshirt senior, but we’re certainly not complaining. McCree exploded, helping to fill the void left by Kevin Dorsey’s injury, catching nine passes for 177 yards and establishing himself as a reliable target for C.J. Brown or Danny O’Brien.

Four Testudos :

Lorne Goree, Keith Bowers, David Mackall, Mario Rowson, A.J. Francis, A.J. Hendy, Marcus Leak and Danny O’Brien. Goree had an excellent first half but cooled off in the second, finishing with seven tackles, one and a half for a loss, and one sack. Bowers and Mackall were successful off the edge, each recording three tackles with Bowers adding in a sack. Rowson had another good game filling in for the injured Kenny Tate, putting together five tackles (two for a loss) and a sack. Francis continued his case to see even more playing time, with four tackles and a sack. Hendy was Maryland’s best player on special teams by a pretty wide margin, and had two tackles on the day. The true freshman Leak made his first collegiate start, and although he dropped a few passes he finished with eight receptions for 61 yards and one score. And then there’s O’Brien. While DOB didn’t have the best game of his career, he managed to come off the bench and put some life in the Maryland offense, completing 9/18 passes for 180 yards and a score. He showed composure and made that QB battle a battle all over again.

Three Testudos :

Titus Till and Darin Drakeford. Till once again led the Terps in tackles with eight, and had arguably his best performance to date, although only one or two plays stood out. As an aside, it’s never a good sign when a safety leads your team in tackles. Drakeford returned from injury and had a solid game, with six tackles (all solo).

Two Testudos :

C.J. Brown, Davin Meggett, Joe Vellano, and Dexter McDougle. Brown got the start for Maryland, and completed 11 of 19 passes for 92 yards and ran ten times for no gain. Not the most effective option under center. And then, this happened.

Brown was taken out for O’Brien, and even when he was cleared to come back into the game he remained on the bench. The quarterback controversy is back, folks. Meggett had a fine game, running eleven times for 44 yards, but was unable to make any big plays against the great FSU defense. Vellano had his worst game of the year – which isn’t saying much, because he’s been fantastic. He finished with three tackles on the day. It seems like this happens every week with McDougle – he gets burnt, misses tackles, and just has a poor start to the game. Then something happens, he picks off a pass, and has a solid end to the game. We can’t figure him out.

One Testudo :

Marcus Whitfield, Cameron Chism, and the coaching staff. Both Whitfield and Chism combined poor outings with key penalties. The coaching staff looked awful once again, as it seems they don’t actually prepare for any games – they just stick with the same (ineffective) gameplan for every opponent and hope it works. Luckily for them, there’s quite a bit of talent on this Maryland team. Unfortunately for them, talent can only take you so far if you’ve got a defensive coordinator who doesn’t know how to adjust to playmaking receivers and a head coach who uses timeouts like they’re going out of style. It wasn’t all bad – Gary Crowton called his best Danny O’Brien game to date – but it’s just tough to watch Maryland play well despite their coach staff.