After another road loss coming out of its bye week, Maryland football heads back to the drawing board with opportunities to secure bowl eligibility slipping away.
“I told Billy this week, I was like if you told me all the work that we put in the summer from leadership and pushing, telling the young guys around, you tell us we'll be 4-5 by midway, halfway, I'd call you crazy,” safety Dante Trader Jr. said after the loss. “This is the hand we're dealt so let's do it. Whatever position God puts us in, we put ourselves in. We got to find a way out of it. So like, every week is live or die for us.”
Maryland took its opening possession into the redzone before Billy Edwards’s pass to TE Dylan Wade fell incomplete on third down, forcing the offense to settle for an early field goal.
“When you play a great team like Oregon, obviously the number one team in the country, everything matters just a little bit more,” quarterback Billy Edwards added. “So obviously, in that first half, we put ourselves in some good opportunities there to come away with points. But when you play the number one team in the country, you got to be able to score touchdowns. And when you get opportunities in the red area, you got to capitalize on it.”
Maryland’s offense turned three redzone trips into 18 points while a fourth redzone visit was stopped short on fourth down after Edwards and WR Tai Felton failed to connect. Yet it was the turnovers that told the tale on Saturday after Edwards finished with a season-low 50% completion percentage on 22-of-44 passing but accounted for all three giveaways including a pair of interceptions.
“It's always going to start him with me, right, as the leader of the offense,” Edwards added. “We'll look back on those three. Obviously, we have the iPads on the sidelines. [I] just have to find a way to do better on the fumble. Step up, find a way to get the ball out of there, or at least don't make a bad play worse, take a sack. And on those other two, it's gotta do my part, do it a little bit better. [It] starts with me. Just gotta be better at that and make sure we're on the same page and execute it better.”
With a chance to win a fourth consecutive game against an injury-ridden Rutgers team coming off a win vs. Minnesota, the attention now shifts toward salvaging what’s in front of Maryland. And for both Edwards and Trader, that starts with bringing the young playmakers along.
“Me and Dante, being older guys on the team, I think the fun challenge – and it's not easy, it's hard – is getting some of the younger guys that we rely on that play to understand kind of what, how hard the season is, how hard playing in the Big Ten is, knowing that we've gone to three straight bowl games and the next one in front of us is the fourth and it's going to be the hardest one. And we know that. So just getting those young guys knowing that we didn't just wake up and go to three straight bowl games here.”
Full postgame transcript from Billy Edwards Jr. and Dante Trader Jr.:
Edwards on his interceptions
“It's always going to start him with me, right, as the leader of the offense. We'll look back on those three. Obviously, we have the iPads on the sidelines. [I] just have to find a way to do better on the fumble. Step up, find a way to get the ball out of there, or at least don't make a bad play worse, take a sack. And on those other two, it's gotta do my part, do it a little bit better. [It] starts with me. Just gotta be better at that and make sure we're on the same page and execute it better.”
Trader on the lack of consistency and execution for Maryland this season
“There's a lot of factors I would say. If you watch the game, like, as a fan perspective, there's a lot of things you don't see. Certain times, like especially on special teams and defense and offense, [if] one person doesn't do their job then it affects the whole unity of a chain. It's like a link in the chain. One link in the chain breaks, the whole thing was done. It's kind of like that. When we come to every game, we don't plan to go, hey, we're not going to click when [the] offense is going. Like, we try to be complimentary like Coach Locks says. And it's just like, we just every week, we just try to be better than last week. Try to be better than the last game that we showed the same tendencies of not aligning and not playing complimentary like we did today. We put them in situations, they put us in situations, special teams put us in situations. We can all look at each other, point a finger, but it's all of us so we got to be accountable for what we got to do every week.”
On settling for a field goal on the opening possession
“When you play a great team like Oregon, obviously the number one team in the country, everything matters just a little bit more. So obviously, in that first half, we put ourselves in some good opportunities there to come away with points. But when you play the number one team in the country, you got to be able to score touchdowns. And when you get opportunities in the red area, you got to capitalize on it. And obviously in the long run of the game it eventually came back to bite us. But we're just, like Dante said, every week we're in the chase of getting better, the chase of perfection. Knowing that we will never get there, but as long as we're getting dang near close to it, then we're going in the right direction. So offensively, yeah, we got to be better, especially when we play great teams like this. Like I say, every week in the Big Ten, every game is gonna be a dog fight. Every week we're playing top ten, 15 defenses in the country. So we got to be more efficient, especially when we get in the red area, third down and, find a way to stay on the field and come up with touchdowns.”
On the chance to still get bowl eligibility
Trader: “Urgency every game. Like, I told Billy this week, I was like if you told me all the work that we put in the summer from leadership and pushing, telling the young guys around, you tell us we'll be 4-5 by midway, halfway, I'd call you crazy. This is the hand we're dealt so let's do it. Whatever position God puts us in, we put ourselves in. We got to find a way out of it. So like, every week is live or die for us. Going off to Rutgers, [we’re] gonna change the page, like they're going off a win and stuff like that. We got to just keep going. We can look back at this loss and like, all right, hang our heads, but that's not gonna do us any good. We’re still able to get both eligible, there’s still breath in our lungs. We can still wake up tomorrow and play the ball. We're blessed. You We just got to take this one on the chin, watch this on a five-hour flight that we're all going to be mad as hell on, but we just got to fix our stuff.”
Edwards: “Me and Dante, being older guys on the team, I think the fun challenge – and it's not easy, it's hard – is getting some of the younger guys that we rely on that play to understand kind of what, how hard the season is, how hard playing in the Big Ten is, knowing that we've gone to three straight bowl games and the next one in front of us is the fourth and it's going to be the hardest one. And we know that. So just getting those young guys knowing that we didn't just wake up and go to three straight bowl games here. Obviously, I came in and I've been to two straight with the team. That just didn't happen overnight. So again, some of those younger guys along with us, continuing to bring them, rally the team, make sure all the teams going in the right direction. That's a challenge we face every week and it started in winter conditioning, summer workouts and all. Obviously, as the season gets along, you face adversity. You lose some tough games. It just puts more on our plate as leaders and older guys in the team to get the team going in the right direction.”
Trader on the lack of Oregon’s explosive plays and limiting the offense
“The quarterback, he's the head of the snake. He gets everything. It’s a joke all week. Soon as he snags his hand, it's like a foot race with track athletes all game. So just really keeping them in front of us and rally and run to the ball. We had a big emphasis of running the ball because they're elite athletes. They're gonna make some people miss. I'll miss a couple. Like, I want some back, but it's just like there are people around running to the ball, you knock those down. If you look back at most of the games, it's missed tackles and missed alignment. We had a couple, but we're able to get some rushing the quarterback is all complimentary. It's not perfect as people think. We got away with a couple, that's just ball. But yeah, just keep everything in front of us. Especially got young guys the corner room, just, me and Glen and myself, just help give them confidence. And it's like, look, because look – it’s the number one team in the country, but you can play. Like you're here too. We’re showing up. They put their pants on how we put our pants on, and just keep everything in front of us. That was our message.”
On Oregon’s fourth down conversion on the fake punt
“Every game watching Oregon, they have a lot of exotic formations, trick formations. You just got to survive the downs because a lot of situations you get put in, motion and fake here and fake here. They're just trying to get your eyes and it's kind of hard. You got certain rules. And there's some situations we've never been in before. We got to look at and learn from those. We survived some and being able to get some guys on the ground. But there's just, like you said, it's trick plays like they're meant to hit. They either hit or they don't. It's like, positive, negative. There’s no in between so we just try to just mitigate the risk.”
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