With the bye week upon us, and basketball just getting underway, there is not a whole lot of new news out there for us Terp fans, so I figure we will take a look at the state of the football team as we sit right now, compared to what we thought might happen.  I am not going to grade every aspect, but more take a look at some of the items that were question marks going into the season.

Obviously the record is a major disappointment.  Not that anyone expected Maryland to compete with the Florida or Alabama’s of the college football world, but I think everyone thought they were a fringe bowl team at worst.  The fact that they lost home games to Middle Tennessee, Rutgers, and UVA washed those bowl hopes down the drain.  If the Terps were going to make it to a bowl game, I think we would all agree those were ones they would have to win.  A loss to Duke is also a game the program as a whole is going to look at for a long time.  Granted this is Duke’s best team in years, but they are still Duke.  Those losses are reason enough to start the doom and gloom feeling around College Park, but there is more.

With the hiring of Don Brown, I think everyone was hoping to see the defense really improve this year.  If you recall way back to week one against Cal, that bend but don’t break scheme of Chris Cosh started to look kind of good.  There are people who aren’t happy with the defense, but I don’t fall into that category, yet.  They have shown some real flashes where this defense is on the cusp of really coming together.  There have been games where they have played really well, only to have the offense put them in tough spot after tough spot.  Then there have been a couple of occasions (Wake and Cal) where they have looked as if this new playbook was written in Japanese.  I am going to hold my judgment on the defense until after the rest of this season.  I have seen some bright spots, that give me a little hope for the future.

One more negative before we wrap this up with a positive.  We all knew the offensive line was a HUGE question mark going into the season.  The injury to Bruce Campbell has made the question even bigger, and so far the answer the unit has shown us, has not been the response we have wanted to see.  There have been mistakes, missed assignments, and at times they have flat out been over matched physically.  If you want to see the bright side of this line, I suppose you could say they are young, and are going to be very experienced going down the road in the future.

Finally, one other question we had revolved around was a replacement of Darius Heyward-Bey.  Torrey Smith has been that player and then some.  I am not sure he is a better player than DHB, but to this point Torrey has been more valuable to the Terps.  He returns kicks, runs reverses, and has been doing a pretty good job at wide receiver.  He ranks among the nations leaders in all purpose yards, and is no doubt the big play guy, the Terps need.  They have started to put him in at QB in the wildcat formation, but with little success so far.  I have a feeling we are going to see that a little more going forward.

For all the big questions I had coming into the season, for the most part they have not be answered the way I had hoped.  At this point I would really like to see some of the younger guys get rotated in a little more for the future.  They really need to assess the young talent and get them experience.  Can they be any worse?

If Maryland leaves Durham on Saturday night with its sixth loss it will indeed be time to start thinking about the future. Some of the obvious decisions would be shutting down running back Da’Rel Scott and perhaps linebacker Demetrius Hartsfield for the rest of the season to heal and be ready for spring practice. Another area that has received attention after Ralph Friedgen’s comments after the Virginia loss is the quarterback position. Senior Chris Turner has been alternatively ordinary and terrible in seven games this season. The offensive line has failed to give him adequate protection (they are on pace for almost 40 sacks allowed) and the running game has all but disappeared now that Da’Rel Scott is out with a broken arm. That may all be true but last season with better pass protection and a decent running game Turner was sacked 27 times last season and his statistics, 57% completions, 13 touchdowns to 11 interceptions, don’t seem all that different from the current campaign. Part of the problem is that Turner is a classic pocket passer who isn’t very mobile and holds on to the ball too long. With a good offensive line and a plethora of receiving weapons he could be very successful but this 2009 Maryland team doesn’t possess the formula he needs to be effective.

Assuming Maryland cannot get a win against Duke, and I think they are an underdog with good reason, then it would be time to thank Chris Turner for three years of decent, if unspectacular, quarterback play and turn to backup Jamarr Robinson and third string freshman Danny O’Brien. It may be unpleasant to bench a senior starter but it is more selfish to handicap the team next year because of some misguided sense of loyalty. With Robinson the only quarterback on the roster with more than a year in the program it is imperative that the staff get a good sense of what they will be dealing with in the spring. The staff hasn’t done much to recruit a replacement for Turner and some of their plans, 2006 4-star recruit Jeremy Ricker and Florida transfer Josh Portis, have failed to pan out. It would also be invaluable to be able to evaluate O’Brien in a game situation and get him more snaps in practice before the spring game.

Chris Turner has done more for the program than anyone could have expected as a 3-star late addition in the 2005 recruiting class and has been a fine representative for the program off the field as well. He beat out the more heralded Jordan Steffy and over hyped Josh Portis to start 27 games and regardless of how many starts he receives the rest of the season will finish high on the all time career passing lists at Maryland.  If, however, the staff cannot turn the season around starting at Duke then it is probably time for the staff to turn to the younger QB’s on the roster for the rest of the season. The critical comments that Turner’s father made on a public message board regarding athletic director Debbie Yow complicate this decision. Now if Turner is replaced the media may try to tie it to his father’s impetuous comments which is a controversy that neither the staff or the players want to deal with in the midst of a season that has gone sour.

If WR Torrey Smith and OT Bruce Campbell return next year and RB Da’Rel Scott can get healthy there is a very good young nucleus on the team for 2010. It would be a mistake to go into next season with an untested quarterback to achieve little more the rest of this season than having Chris Turner, nice guy though he may be, accumulate stats in a string of meaningless losses. It isn’t likely that Robinson or O’Brien will prove any more effective than Turner and it is more probable that they will both be worse but at the same time it seems far fetched that Turner would produce more wins than either of his backups given the overall play of the team.