Maryland Terrapin Football 2011: Another Look at the Miami Game

After college football’s best impression of Monday Night Football, the Maryland Terrapins have walked out winners in their ACC opener against the embattled Miami Hurricanes.

The ACC had the spotlight on Labor Day night and did not disappoint with a strong showdown from an inter-division battle. Nor did Maryland waste its chance in the spotlight by unveiling its new uniforms utilizing state pride.

The new Terrapin uniforms were widely panned across the social media world, but this writer is the only one, apparently, who liked the new jerseys for the University of Maryland football team.

The game itself was a fairly entertaining one that came down to the last minute of the fourth quarter.

Mother Nature deemed me unworthy to watch the finale with an exceptionally well-timed power outage, but the ESPN text alerts told the story of a Maryland defense coming through in the clutch with a pick six to wrap up the game in the last minute of play.

The game started with Maryland marching down the field with a lot of wide receiver screens which utilized the cushion given by the Miami cornerbacks. The score was the only one for either team in the first quarter.

The contest picked up in the second quarter with a total of 27 points between both teams. Maryland had a six point lead going into the half.

ESPN college football analyst Mark Schlabach tweeted during the game on receiving his first tweet of the season about the ‘U’ being back. Even though they had some flashes of good play, the Hurricanes never really established themselves with any great play that would make anyone believe the former power has returned to full strength.

It might be some time before the ‘Canes get back to a status of relevance even in the ACC, but they did not look completely lost under first year coach Al Golden.

However, in the battle of the first-year coaches in their debuts, Edsall came out on top of the match-up with Golden, thus giving Maryland a heads up on the rest of their conference schedule.

These are the standout performers of the game.

Offensive Standout: Danny O’Brien. The UM quarterback completed over 70 percent of his passes for a total of 348 yards with one touchdown. O’Brien’s performance through the air was a great way for him to start off this season, and he looked very comfortable in the pocket under new offensive coordinator, Gary Crowton, and his new offense.

Defensive Standout: Cameron Chism. Chism played a role in two of the Terrapin touchdowns. The more important of the two came near the end of the fourth quarter, which sealed the game by picking off Miami quarterback Stephen Morris for the pick six in the final minute.

Gameball: Randy Edsall. The new head coach of Maryland football came out a winner and was humble in the post-game interviews in terms of credit for the win. Edsall preached team all the way, even going as far to remove the names from the trendsetting uniforms, and he gave all the credit for the victory to his players for their effort.