The Terps’ overhauled coaching staff and a new veteran core look to address what went wrong in 2024.
Maryland football head coach Michael Locksley said at Big Ten Media Day he doesn’t think there’s a difference between being a coach and a teacher in his locker room. The 2024 season put his ability as the latter to the test.
“We had haves and have-nots in our locker room [in 2024] for the first time,” Locksley said. “The landscape of college football taught me a valuable lesson, that it’s important for me even in the midst of this change to continue to educate our players on the importance of playing for something bigger than yourself … if I gotta put my desk in the locker room this year, I will.”
College football enters a new era in 2025, the first year in which the NCAA’s new revenue sharing model will be implemented. Locksley believes the growing pains of the NIL era contributed to the struggles of his 2024 squad.
32 players from that roster transferred, including longtime faces like Billy Edwards Jr., Roman Hemby, Preston Howard and Lavon Johnson. Nine others departed for the NFL. Both coordinators and a plethora of assistant coaches also left the team. The Terps’ fall camp, which kicked off Wednesday, provides an opportunity for new leaders to emerge.
Some appear already on their way to doing so. Locksley has praised upperclassmen like receiver Octavion Smith Jr., offensive lineman Isaiah Wright, linebacker Daniel Wingate and defensive back Jalen Huskey for stepping into those roles.
And it’s impossible to discuss Maryland’s 2025 season without mentioning Malik Washington. The highly-touted freshman quarterback has impressed both on and off the field from the moment he arrived in College Park.
“I think he’ll be awesome,” Wright said. “The maturity that he brings every day is like no other that I’ve seen, especially from a freshman.”
New offensive coordinator Pep Hamilton compared the situation to his time with the 2016 Cleveland Browns, who had 19 rookies on their roster.
“As a coach, I learned a lot about how to approach a situation in which you have so many unknowns, you don’t have as many known commodities,” Hamilton said. “And it started with us making sure that we’re tough, smart and reliable … not beating ourselves.
Locksley’s new-look coaching staff is loaded with experience. They’ll be tasked with trying to develop young talent and establish team culture while also growing from last year’s mistakes.
Nowhere is that more prevalent than in the quarterback room. All three top signal callers from 2024 — Edwards, MJ Morris and Cam Edge — are gone, as well as offensive coordinator Josh Gattis. The starting job appears to come down to redshirt junior UCLA transfer Justyn Martin, who has just one career start, and Washington.
Hamilton, an industry veteran, is known for his work developing quarterbacks, most notably the five seasons he spent mentoring Andrew Luck with both Stanford and the Indianapolis Colts.
He said the best way to support a young quarterback is a gameplan that keeps pressure off of him, and a supporting cast that executes it.
“You got to do everything you can to keep them out of obvious passing situations,” Hamilton said. “We’re going to try and be creative in how we manage and mitigate our early downs so that we don’t end up in third-and-long situations, where it becomes an uphill battle for any quarterback to be successful.”
Maryland’s offensive success may be dependent on its offensive line, which fielded both the worst pass-blocking and run-blocking Pro Football Focus grade in the Big Ten last season. Offensive line coach Brian Braswell was let go and replaced by James Madison associate head coach Damian Wroblewski, who now must build up a unit that will return only two starters.
“Even though we have quite a few guys [on the offensive line] that haven’t played beside each other in games, we feel like the way that they’re working and trending in the right direction, they’re going to give us an opportunity to be able to be multi-dimensional in our attack,” Hamilton said.
New defensive coordinator Ted Monachino, a former NFL coordinator who was most recently UNC’s defensive line coach, faces a similar predicament. Maryland’s secondary has continuity from 2024, but its front seven underwent a nearly-total overhaul.
Many of its best run defenders from a season ago are done. The defensive line loses a lot of talent and size from 2024 — in a Big Ten conference known for prowess in the trenches, there are questions that must be quickly answered in fall camp.
Enter Wingate. The junior linebacker was Maryland’s third-leading tackler last season (66) and appears set to occupy an even larger role in 2025 following the departure of linebackers Caleb Wheatland, Kellan Wyatt and Ruben Hyppolite II. Look for Wingate to become a defensive stalwart come the regular season.
“Our inside linebacker group, we’ve got the bellcow of our defense in that group in Daniel Wingate,” Monachino said. “He’s had an unbelievable offseason.”