COLUMN: Too much laundry: a familiar problem is rearing its ugly head for Maryland football

Maryland football dropped its second game of the season last Saturday, falling 31-29 to Purdue in the closing moments. In the box score, a failed two-point conversion will be remembered as the biggest factor in the defeat. However, it may have been the play before that truly tells the tale. 

After surrendering back-to-back touchdown drives over the final four minutes and watching their one-point advantage swapped for an eight-point hole, the Terps rallied. Taulia Tagovailoa drove his offense down the field, finding Corey Dyches from 18 yards away for the pair’s second touchdown connection of the game. Down by two, Tagovailoa found Rakim Jarrett in the endzone, but a penalty for an ineligible man downfield undid the try.

The ensuing attempt fell incomplete, handing the Boilermakers a victory and presenting a familiar holdup for the Terps: penalties limiting their ceiling.

“We didn’t finish,” Tagovailoa said postgame.

The Terps got close, but ultimately didn’t finish the game out, and the yellow on the field didn’t do them any favors. The ineligible man foul took points off the board, and quickly deflated the optimism that had grown surrounding a potential 5-1 start to the season.

Let’s not treat this penalty as standalone — it was one of nine the Terps chalked up Saturday — and each one played a role in the final outcome. These lapses have hindered their ability to etch their name among the top of the conference early this season.

This unfortunately is not a new issue for Maryland, as last season Mike Locksley’s squad chalked up 6.8 flags per game, and the head coach often had to answer for it.

“I always use the analogy, ‘if you have kids, how do you get your kids to stop doing dumb things,’” Locksley said last season. “You just keep reinforcing it, you draw the line in the sand in terms of these are the standards and how we need to play the game.”

This year, through six games Maryland has accrued 50 penalties for 428 yards, and has finished all but one game — a 34-27 defeat at Michigan — with at least eight flags. Against SMU, where they racked up a season-high 15 fouls for 141 yards, the errors forced another comeback effort, only in that instance the Terps did enough to secure the victory.

“My rule of thumb is we don’t talk to the other team, we don’t talk to the officials,” Locksley said after beating SMU. “We got to show maturity. We got to show the discipline that it takes to walk away and play within the next play, so that we do not get dumb penalties, selfish penalties.”

Against Purdue, the penalties did them in.

There has been discourse about the blocked extra point that shouldn’t have been, but the Terps gave up two touchdowns afterwards. Sure it played a role — like all plays do — in the outcome of the game, but a successful two point conversion would have negated that. Tagovailoa and Jarrett managed that, tying the game for a moment, until that penalty took the points back.

These issues with discipline haven’t sunk Maryland’s season so to speak, but they are keeping them from advancing higher into the Big Ten’s hierarchy. They entered the conference in 2014 along with Rutgers, and for much of the time, the Terps, like the Scarlet Knights, have been viewed as the bottom feeders on the gridiron to the conference’s blue bloods. 

Locksley entered wishing to change that narrative, and if he can find a way to keep the dirty laundry at bay, he may be well on his way to doing so. The Terps seem to have a different sort of juice this season — a dynamic quarterback, stout receiving corps, and new faces on defense help — and following their bowl win a year ago, seem poised to keep progressing towards the upper echelon of the Big Ten. 

No one is asking them to be an Ohio State or a Michigan (yet) but to gain the respect they are seeking, they need to continue to secure wins against other competitive teams in the conference and do it in a convincing manner. Penalties hurt that cause, and ultimately relegate the Terps towards the lower end of the rankings. 

If the Terps really want to continue to build something the rest of the league and the country will respect year in and year out, playing a cleaner game is a good way to start.