Terps finally put on an offensive show in 2008.
Maryland has been a team of offensive ineptitude in 2008. The new offense, allegedly put together by Offensive Coordinator James Franklin, but reeking of the overly conservative play calling of head coach Ralph Freidgen, has been slow to score points.
It has been said that Ralph has been hands-off on the offense, however we have not seen much of the inventive play calling that James Franklin used while at Kansas State.
On this Tuesday afternoon in Boise, ID, the Terps finally got it going. Facing a highly rated run defense and the 109th (out of 118 teams) pass defense, the Terps employed a balanced offense to attack the Nevada Wolfpack.
The football Terrapins were very efficient on the basic plays, poor on the innovative plays and much more physical than the opponents. For watchers of the team all year, I think it could be said that the real opponent was us. We could not overcome our own lack of killer instinct this day. There was a real opportunity to hang 60 on Nevada.
In the end, we ran all over the Nevada defense. Nevada relied to much on the tackling prowess of their defensive backs. By piling 8 and 9 defenders into the area between the tackles, once a Maryland runner got through the first wave of defenders there was only one man to beat.
The poor tackling from the safety position doomed Nevada to seeing 4 plays of over 49 yards each. Two backbreaking runs from the Terps including one by seldom used Morgan Green and the second by Da’rel Scott.
We will have more on the game and the Terps defense in the next post.