Maryland has reached the halfway point of its teetering 2026 season. The verdict so far? “Not good enough.”
“This is a checkpoint, not obviously the conclusion. And so we look at the first half of our year, 2-4 ain’t good enough, and I’m super frustrated,” coach Mike Locksley said Tuesday. “Our players are super frustrated because we know we’re better than what we’ve played, and that’s what motivates us.”
Six games in, the Terrapins (2-4, 0-3 Big Ten) have lost four in a row, all to Power Four opponents. The latest setback came at No. 5 Ohio State last week, 45-16.
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“The work has been the type of work we need, but playing our best on game day has not been, and that’s on me as a coach,” Locksley said. “I have to own that, and the goal now is to, as I say, do more with less, meaning let’s find a way to run the things that our players can get executed.”
In a twist, this week Locksley faces someone on the other sideline who knows exactly what he’s going through.
“Nobody likes where it is, but there’s been zero [times] where I get faraway looks or guys that are down in the dumps,” Rutgers coach Greg Schiano told reporters Tuesday. “They just try to fight their way out of it and chop their way out of it.”
Maryland and Rutgers — for better and worse — are inexorably linked together in the Big Ten. Both came into the conference at the same time, for many of the same reasons, and have been unable to reap the competitive benefits of having their football programs in the nation’s biggest conference.
“We’ve done some good things on the football side. We haven’t done it consistently,” Locksley said. “I’ve been here for 18 seasons [including as an assistant], and I can tell you that through 18 seasons here, finding how to consistently win is not just a Coach Locks problem. It’s a problem that I think any coach that’s worked here [has had].”
One of them will get their first Big Ten win of the season on Saturday (12:30, FS1). For Schiano, it would be his first since beating Maryland last November in Piscataway. Locksley’s drought is longer: The Terrapins are winless in their last 11 conference games and haven’t won one in College Park in nearly two years.
“I’m not a patient guy. I have to stand up here, breathe deep, and pretend that I’m not super frustrated. But I’m super frustrated because we’re not getting it done, and my job is to figure out how to get it done,” Locksley said.
Once the calendar turns fully to fall, Maryland typically gets stuck, recording only 12 wins in 40 tries from the beginning of October onward during Locksley’s eight-year tenure. Five of those wins are against the Scarlet Knights, providing a silver lining for Saturday’s homecoming.
“They have a new [defensive coordinator], so it’s not the same. Before it was quarters, tilt nose, field under, like all that stuff,” said Maryland quarterback Malik Washington, who was held to only 98 yards passing against Rutgers last season but rushed for a season-high 164. “They’re gonna do what they do, and they’re gonna do it well.”
Washington has yet to find the rhythm that made him one of the nation’s top recruits and top freshmen last season. The Archbishop Spaulding product threw for 892 yards and six touchdowns in Maryland’s first three games last month with no interceptions. Since, the numbers have reversed. Washington’s tallied six interceptions — three of which have been returned for touchdowns — with only one passing TD and 460 yards. He believes the team’s process has been sound, even if his numbers haven’t reflected that.
“It’s nothing to do with our work. I think the team’s working really hard. We have the process,” Washington said. “Sometimes the result just is what the result is. You try not to focus on the result, really, just the process and the work, and let the result be what it is.”
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