The NCAA updates its college football stats at some point between bedtime on Saturday night and the time the alarm clock goes off Sunday morning.
Naturally, this makes it a weekly stop on the way to preparing for the next few days —- and assessing the damage to date.
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And with Maryland, there’s a lot of damage.
A third of the way into the season —- and at this stage, with the Terrapins at 1-3 and majoring in turnovers, using the phrase “regular season” doesn’t seem quite right —- pretty much nothing looks good for Maryland.
Of the 17 categories tracked, Maryland is in the top half of three of them (45th in passing offense, 57th in pass defense and tied for 42nd in sacks).
The Terps rank in triple digits (no better than the 17th percentile) in six categories: Total defense (103rd), pass efficiency defense (103rd), rush defense (110th), sacks allowed (113th), scoring defense (115th) and turnover margin (117th).
Somehow, three teams have a worse average turnover margin than Maryland.
In the ACC, it’s even more unsightly. Maryland is in the top five in the league in precisely one category —- sacks, where it is third.
It’d be one thing if there was one obvious fault and the Terps could try to scheme to cover it up. That is, essentially, what they did defensively last year to try to hide an undersized line.
But there are a lot of problems. And with eight games left, there might not be enough time to fix enough of them to achieve even respectability by season’s end.
—- Patrick Stevens
