Maryland Football: Terps just need to forget Ohio State loss

The Maryland football team was dominated by Ohio State once again on Saturday afternoon.

Moving forward, the Terrapins just need to forget about the ugly loss and focus on the rest of the season.

If you take a look at the box score, it wasn’t pretty by any stretch. Maryland racked up just 66 yards of total offense and six first downs throughout the entire game.

Quarterback Max Bortenschlager completed just 3-of-12 passes for 16 yards in addition to losing a fumble. The Terps went just 1-of-16 on third down and rushed for 42 yards on 50 carries.

Ohio State’s front seven absolutely suffocated Maryland at the point attack. The only bright spots were a 100-yard kickoff return touchdown from Ty Johnson and a 20-yard fourth quarter touchdown run from Javon Leake.

Maryland obviously wasn’t expected to win, but coach D.J. Durkin was looking to close the cap between the two programs. That certainly wasn’t something that came to fruition on Saturday.

Despite starting the season with an upset win over a ranked Texas team, this may not be where Maryland wants to be as a program. The Terps look to be riding high even when Tyrrell Pigrome went down and Kasim Hill has forced into the starting quarterback role.

Bortenschlager struggled against Central Florida, but really had a strong performance in a 31-24 win over Minnesota last week. Then he was brought back down to Earth at the hands of the Ohio State defense.

In Saturday’s 62-14 loss, Maryland doesn’t really have much that they need to dwell on. It was a brutal showing against a team that has a chance to sneak into the College Football Playoff later this season.

Two of the next three games are very winnable with Northwestern next week and Indiana on Homecoming weekend.

Northwestern is coming off a 31-7 loss in which they were demolished by Penn State. These will be teams that will be looking to get back into the win column, so Maryland will have to bring their “A” game.

On Oct. 21, the Terps will travel to Madison for a date with Wisconsin. The Badgers have arguably been the most impressive Big Ten team not named Penn State so far this season.

Even if Maryland gets beaten by Wisconsin, the Homecoming game takes place on Oct. 28 and Indiana comes to College Park. The two teams put on a track meet last season when Indiana edged Maryland 42-36 in Bloomington.

Just looking at that three-game stretch, if Maryland is able to knock Northwestern and Indiana, they’re all of the sudden just one win away from reaching bowl eligibility. If that happens, it would be a much easier road than they took to reach that plateau last season.

Maryland got their sixth win in the regular season finale against Rutgers in 2016. Ironically, the Terps face the Scarlet Knights at Yankee Stadium the week after Indiana this season.

Next: Terps get throttled by Ohio State

If Maryland gets this devastating Ohio State loss in their rear view mirror, there’s plenty of games still on the docket that the Terps can win.