In a little more than a year into his reign as the head football coach
at Maryland, Randy Edsall went from a celebrated honeymoon to the
subject of intense scrutiny.
The falling out included a
prominent sports columnist calling for Edsall’s termination. But Edsall
isn’t reading what John Feinstein writes, or what many callers on radio
shows in the Washington, D.C. and Baltimore areas are saying, nor does
he give a shake about what the Internet message board hounds are
barking.
The Terrapins went from 9-4 under former coach Ralph
Freidgen in 2010 to 2-10 and a laughingstock under Edsall last fall. A
whopping 24 players have transferred already, including quarterback
Danny O'Brien, who may end up starting this fall at Wisconsin because he
fits into the loophole that allows transfers to play immediately if
they’ve graduated.
Edsall says the program is headed in right
direction and that the program is better off having players that want to
be there. This spring he said the team bought into what the coaching
staff was teaching. All things considered, that’s progress.
“I
don’t worry about the players who aren’t here,” Edsall said when asked
about no longer having O’Brien. “All I worry about is (quarterbacks)
C.J. Brown and Caleb Rowe and what they’re going to do for us. Everybody
here is all in and just looking forward to continuing the work to
progress with these young men.”
With that, Edsall said the Terrapins achieved their goals in spring practice and have bounced into the offseason as he’d hoped.
“We
had basically five objectives that we wanted to work to get better at
during spring,” said Edsall, who spent 12 years running the show at
Connecticut before taking over at Maryland. “Number one was to make sure
that everybody was all in with what we were doing. I think we’ve
accomplished that. The attitude, the effort, the enthusiasm was there
this spring. It was fun to be on the practice field and around the
guys.”
You just don’t hear coaches singling out how much they
enjoyed their players in the manner Edsall did. It was as if to say he
didn’t enjoy them previously, which was probably mutual.
In
Edsall’s defense, though, he had 2.5 hours a week less of practice time
than other ACC teams because Freidgen was cited by the NCAA of
practicing too long. Having so much time cut out of a work week is bad
enough for a coach with tenure at a school, but it can slow the building
process with a brand new regime at the helm.
But considering the
degree in which Maryland most often lost -- to Temple by 31 points,
allowed 56 to Clemson at home, and lost additional games by 25, 11, 18,
24, and 21 points -- it’s hard to point to a shortage in practice time
as the main reason. The issues were deep and obvious enough to
nationally renowned columnist John Feinstein that he called for the
firing of Edsall on Nov. 27.
In his Washington Post column,
Feinstein wrote: “How about re-evaluating yourself? Does a career record
of 76-80 make you exempt from that? Does the fact that your failure
ruined the last college football memories of your senior class –
something Edsall never brings up – bother you at all?
“No.
Nothing bothers Edsall. He’s never wrong. He coached well; his players
played bad. And wore caps backwards too often. The media was unfair. And
he’s just like (owner) Bob Kraft and the Patriots.”
Feinstein’s
corner has no stand on Edsall’s job status as of now. But Edsall does
have a lot of fans and media to win back. The Terps aren’t projected to
make much of an improvement this coming season, so Edsall needs patience
from everyone around him, not to mention some understanding.
“When
you go through change and a transition, being in this as long as I
have, it does not happen overnight...” he said. “It’s not basketball.
You can’t change with one guy.”
No, Edsall definitely can’t do it alone.
