Last season, the Maryland Terrapins represented the second-to-last game of Michigan's regular season B1G slate. They were the final tuneup before Ohio State in late November and Michigan skunked the Terps 59-18. This year it's the reverse, as Maryland opens up Michigan's B1G schedule. The little chronological time between these most recent two meetings is reflected in this offensive piece, as little has changed with the Maryland offense. Though they lost their RB and TE from last season, Maryland returns their QB, every WR of note, and all five offensive linemen. Therefore, this FFFF will look quite a bit like last season, but there will be some new wrinkles along the way. 

 

The Film: Maryland has played Buffalo, Charlotte, and SMU so far in the non-conference. Though I am not completely convinced SMU is going to be good this year without Sonny Dykes, they are still a clear step up in terms of quality from those other two opponents. They also gave Maryland an extremely competitive game, as opposed to the comfortable blowouts that the Terps got against the other two. SMU made the most sense as the opponent to use for this situation. 

Personnel: The chart. Click for big or here for PDF. 

Maryland returns QB Taulia Tagovailoa, the central cog to the offense and someone who will be discussed often in this piece. He loses his leading runner from last season in Tayon Fleet-Davis but did return Colby McDonald, one of last season's foremost reserves at the position. McDonald has been supplanted as the nominal starter by Roman Hemby, a RS Fr who leads the team in carries by a significant margin. The second back in terms of carries is the bigger Antwain Littleton II, a classmate of Hemby's who leads the team in rushing TDs. All three of McDonald, Hemby, and Littleton can run routes as receivers, since that is a staple of the Locksley Spread n' Shred system. 

At receiver, Maryland returns its vaunted trio of Dontay Demus, Rakim Jarrett, and Jeshaun Jones, and adds Jacob Copeland to the picture. Demus got off to a torrid pace last season before injuries ended in his season in early October. He is a good player, but is presently not playing at the same caliber he was a year ago and has fallen down the receiver hierarchy. Jarrett is the superstar, a former 5* recruit who is poised to be picked by the NFL in the early rounds next spring. Jones is tied with Jarrett for the team lead in receptions with 11, while Copeland, a Florida transfer, has the highest YPC average at 21.5. All three of Jarrett, Copeland, and Jones have a catch of 35+ yards this season, and all three have a receiving TD. Tai Felton and Octavion Smith Jr. are farther down the depth chart but occasionally see the field, each with 3 catches on the year so far. 

The TE position was hurt by the lost of last year's star Chigoziem Okonkwo. In his place there is a rotation between Corey Dyches and CJ Dippre, with Dippre getting a bit more of the total snaps because of his superior abilities as a blocker, while Dyches is more of the receiving option. I will also note that while these two are the only TEs in the main rotation, edge defender Austin Fontaine was used as a tight end as well in the game I saw. 

Maryland's offensive line returns all five pieces from last season. Jaelyn Duncan, whose raw tools and athleticism are garnering him NFL buzz (something I'm not sold on at all), reprises his role at LT, as does Delmar Glaze at RT and Mason Lunsford at LG. Both Lunsford and Glaze had cyans on last year's diagram, but neither have done anything to earn it so far. We shall see if that holds up against Michigan and the rest of the B1G slate. The only change at OL was shifting Johari Branch to C and Spencer Anderson to RG (they were reversed last season), a move that has not paid off in your author's view. Branch was my highest rated Maryland OL last season and came in the lowest in my charting this season, largely because of poor pass protection related to stunts and line call responsibilities assigned to a center. Amelio Moran has played the most of any non-starter OL, but there are no spots currently seeing rotation. 

[AFTER THE JUMP: A new dual-threat RB]

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Spread, pro-style, or hybrid: Maryland is still running a spread offense under head coach Mike Locksley, going completely in the shotgun everywhere except short yardage. This game had three under center plays and two of them came at the 1 yard line, when the Terps went I-Formation with their beef package. Table: 

Formation	Run	PA	Pass	Total
Shotgun	29	10	18	95%
Under Center	2	1	--	5%

You may notice a significant amount of play-action there, which is something that stands out about the Maryland offense. Though that number does include a few RPOs, for the most part it is referring to true play-action, which is integrated as a feature of the Maryland offense. As you can also tell from that above table, run to pass distribution was nearly perfect in this game, 31 runs to 29 passes (Maryland didn't run that many offensive plays). Here's the breakdown by down: 

Down	Run	Pass
1st	15	12
2nd	10	8
3rd	6	8
4th	-	1

Also plenty of balance here. Slightly skewed towards the run earlier in downs and a bit more towards the pass later, but this was a tidy distribution overall. How does this compare to the typical Maryland game, you may ask? Right in line with the norm! Maryland has attempted 92 passes and rushed 92 times on the season in ESPN's numbers. We should note that these are three non-conference games in which Maryland was leading most all of the time (though the SMU game was more dicey). Therefore we should expect a bit more running and a bit less passing. I'd wager that Maryland will throw more than they run against Michigan because of probable score effects. 

Base Set: Maryland plays in 11 personnel most often, although 10, 12, and 20 personnel are in rotation. When they are in their 11 personnel package, it may manifest in a variety of ways. Their primary TEs can all run routes in addition to blocking and all of the RBs are receivers in addition to runners. This allows Maryland to line up in a number of different looks with the same personnel package, including 5 wide even with 3 WRs, 1 RB, and 1 TE on the field. Still, I would classify something boring like this as the base: 

Just before this picture was taken, the RB Hemby motioned from out wide into the backfield, which shows you how the 11 personnel package can shift around. It's also a small window into all the pre-snap motions Maryland likes. 

The 12 personnel look can shift around a lot too, but most often it has one WR and one TE on each side of the field: 

These are the two most common packages. 10 and 20 appear from time to time and will show up in clips I will show you. 

Basketball on Grass or MANBALL: Maryland is a zone blocking team most of the time. I had a couple of gap plays, particularly ones where they like to free up LT Jaelyn Duncan to run in space as a lead blocker, but the typical inside zone and split zone were used frequently in this game. Therefore, this week's opponent finds themselves squarely in the Basketball on Grass territory. 

Hurry it up or grind it out: Just as they were last year, Maryland is a hurry it up team. They don't do a ton of outright tempo, rushing up to the line to get a play off quickly, but they do move with deliberate pace. The flexibility of formations within their personnel packages allows them to do a lot of different stuff without waiting for proper substitutions, and so it is pretty common to see Maryland run plays with 25 on the playclock. Indeed, that's more or less the expectation if they are not substituting. Much like Hawaii figured to be, Maryland has a shot to challenge Michigan and Jesse Minter's defense with some tempo. 

Quarterback Dilithium Rating (Scale: 1 [Navarre] to 10 [Denard]): This begins our discussion of Taulia Tagovailoa, which will continue later in the HenneChart section. In some ways, the more interesting part of his game is what he does with his legs and that will be discussed here. Tagovailoa is a very athletic QB who is capable of being an asset on the ground. He is not blazingly fast like Denard nor thicc like JT Barrett or Tim Tebow, but Tagovailoa has the tools to be a very good runner. Rating him on this scale is difficult because of the disconnect between what he could be and what he is. There are times when Taulia's legs dazzle, in both the designed run game and scrambling. Maryland draws up several design runs for him, especially when they have an empty backfield: 

And here's an example of a good scramble from Tagovailoa: 

That run would be nullified by the unnecessary blindside block by Jeshaun Jones, but the play shows off how Tagovailoa forces opposing defenses to keep contain or else suffer the consequences.

So what's the issue here? The problem is that I can't rate Tagovailoa as highly as his athleticism and capabilities would suggest because he doesn't have a great feel for the art. He gets happy feet in the pocket, flushing himself out of pockets that haven't yet broken down, and too often runs backwards or directly into pressure, causing excessive losses. Here is Tagovailoa making a poor cut upfield right into the arms of the tacklers: 

This comes up far too often. There were clips in FFFF from last year of Tagovailoa doing the Madden QB thing, running 10 yards straight backwards and taking a devastating -15 yard sack. I didn't see that in this game, but if he faces heavy pressure against Michigan, I wouldn't rule out the possibility that it happens again. He is a jittery QB who likes to move, with rollouts in the passing game being another core component of the Maryland offense, but his mental processing and the results underlying his tendencies don't justify the amount that Tagovailoa wants to run, if that makes sense. Therefore, I leave him a 7 on the QB Dilithium Scale. 

Dangerman: Last year we went with WR Rakim Jarrett, and while I could do that again, I could also direct you to read the piece from last year if you want more on Jarrett, since not much has changed. He's still an athletic WR who is headed to the NFL soon. Instead, I want to pick out someone new who wasn't mentioned at all last year but has emerged as a key piece of the offense and someone I was impressed with for Maryland in this game. That would be RB Roman Hemby.  

Hemby was a mostly anonymous 3* recruit from the DMV area in the 2021 recruiting class who did not feature much as a freshman and got his redshirt. As a RS Fr in 2022, Hemby has emerged as the Terps' top back and after rushing 16 times for 151 yards, on top of 4 catches for 61 yards, I gave him a star and decided it was Hemby I wanted to talk about. This was a generally impressive game for the run blocking of Maryland's offensive line, but Hemby was a part of the rushing success against SMU too. The OL does a good job on this play but Hemby picks up a big gain thanks to his speed and awareness: 

Maryland's offense has a lot of #SpeedInSpace hallmarks and the profile of Hemby allows him to be a very good fit for this system. On the first offensive play he showcased the ability to turn the corner and transform a well-blocked play into another huge gain: 

At 200 lbs., Hemby does not qualify as a Mooseback, but he showed off some Mooseback qualities in addition to the ex-track athlete speed. Here he stiff-arms a dude with zest: 

On another play later in the game, Hemby would keep his legs churning in the pile to grind out extra yardage, even while surrounded by tacklers. 

The receiving abilities of Hemby must also be discussed, as he is tied for fourth on the team in catches. Here they run Hemby on a wheel route (out of the Fritz/diamond formation!) and it creates an ideal matchup mismatch: 

RB #24 lined up to the right of Tagovailoa

Like Tayon Fleet-Davis before him, Hemby is another dual-threat receiving/running option who fits the system and can cause schematic headaches for defensive coordinators. As a second year player who is still very green to a significant role in college football, I was impressed with how far along Hemby is right now. I'm intrigued to see how his career develops, but in the present, Hemby is our Dangerman. 

HenneChart: I apologize for that brief interlude, we shall now return to our regularly scheduled Tagovailoa programming. After talking about his legs, let's discuss what I saw from the Terrapin QB through the air in this game. Interestingly, what I saw was mostly short stuff. You'd think with a top-notch WR room including several home run vertical targets that Maryland would be looking to stretch the field more, but that is not exactly what occurred. Mostly they kept it short and as a result, padded the DSR: 

Maryland vs. SMU	Good				Neutral			Bad					Ovr
Quarterback	DO	CA	SCR		PR	MA		BA	TA	IN	BR		DSR	Screens
Taulia Tagovailoa	-	14	4		-	1		-	2	1	-		86%	6

Looks great, but so many of those catchable balls were not difficult throws. Credit to Taulia for not messing up many of them, but this was a Rutgers(y) day from the Maryland offense. There were throws down the field, including this connection with Rakim Jarrett: 

Wide open receiver + accurate ball = TD. He also had a similar throw to Jeshaun Jones that was dropped. If it was connected, it, too, would have resulted in six points. There were a few downfield strikes (there were more in the first two games of the season for the Terps), but it was mostly quick and easy against SMU. Many of the balls in the catchable territory bordered on the verge of screens, stuff to the flat like this throw to TE Corey Dyches: 

Throwing on the run remains a key part of Taulia's game, with designed rollouts being mentioned in the Dilithium section. Here's an example: 

I know you're probably wondering about the Chaos QB Taulia that we saw last season. So far it's been tamped down a decent amount relative to 2021. Both of his interceptions this season came on balls that were inaccurately thrown as opposed to truly disastrous reads. However, there were still occasional signs of his old tendencies in this game, buried underneath the surface. The one truly inaccurate ball he threw in this game might've been intercepted by the underneath LB if it had been accurately thrown: 

Overall, though, the poor decision-making was not on display here. We shouldn't discount it completely, since we're not that far removed from this in fall 2021: 

But so far, so good for Taulia. Last season I said that Tagovailoa appeared liable to throw a pick under pressure against the Michigan defense and then he threw a pick six to DJ Turner. That QB is still in there, but he may be reigned in a bit, perhaps by throwing short stuff. But if pressure ramps up and/or Maryland finds themselves trailing and needing to throw more, Tagovailoa's tendency to get himself in trouble with his legs could manifest itself in disaster. He is an athletic QB with a good arm who's solidly accurate, but the allegations of being a poor QB between the ears still remain. This game will be the first opportunity in 2022 for him to beat back those allegations. 

 

Overview

The Maryland offense is much like it was last season. It is built around spreading the ball out, using RBs who are comfortable as receivers or as passers, TEs who can hit the flats, and WRs who can play high and low. Running lanes are created more through spreading the defense out than through mowing them down, but I will say that there was a bit of the latter against SMU, which did perk my ears up. 

Last year my review of the Maryland offensive line as run blockers was not pretty. This year's game was much better, but it's hard to know how much of that is related to the competition. Maryland has not played a P5 team yet, but in returning all five linemen, it's also not crazy to believe they could have improved in run blocking as well. There have already been clips of solid OL play, but here's another one from one of the few plays where Maryland pulled linemen: 

Quick doubles against the interior DL of SMU was the main way that Maryland was able to pave the Mustangs in this game, with an example here from the C and RG: 

I didn't think that at any one lineman stood out in run blocking; they all had their moments. As a whole, it was an impressive effort, but now the degree of difficulty will ratchet up significantly. What was very apparent against SMU was that run blocking > pass protection, when it comes to this Maryland offense. 

That's because the pass protection is rather wobbly. Interestingly, the weakest piece on the OL in pass pro seems to be the interior and center more specifically, where Johari Branch got the cyan. The center is not typically someone you think of as being the weak spot in pass protection, but I got a lot of 2017 Michigan vibes watching this tape. If you recall that season, the Wolverines had loads of trouble picking up stunts, which went back to issues with center Patrick Kugler. This was a similar story, where Branch and one guard depending on the play (more often RG Spencer Anderson) were fooled by interior stunts and let free rushers come right up the middle far too often: 

This next clip was the second consecutive play where Branch and Anderson biffed a stunt: 

That was a nice throw from Tagovailoa and a very tough drop by Jeshaun Jones, but getting back to the OL, not what you want to see. I thought the tackles did okay, questionable a bit at times, but the main problems causing havoc came from the interior. Just three games into his Michigan DC career, Jesse Minter has already shown a flair for weird blitzes helping to create internal pressure. Feels like this Maryland OL could be ripe for taking advantage in that regard. 

As for the weapons, Rakim Jarrett is a Dude. I already showed you his one long reception in this game and here I'll drop in a clip from last season, showcasing his shiftiness and agility: 

Gotta think that DJ Turner is covering him in this game. The other receivers for Maryland are all good players, but Dontay Demus is not back to being a star yet, while Copeland and Jones are just guys. Good guys, but just guys. You saw the Jones drop a couple clips ago, as he and Copeland did not have great games against SMU. This will likely be a test for Michigan's CB depth, but right now I don't think Maryland is terribly comparable to OSU. Maybe if Demus pops and shows he's back to 100% in his recovery from injury, but more than likely Maryland is closer to MSU than OSU in terms of their WR room. 

Corey Dyches is the receiving TE and he was someone they ran out into the flat a lot. You saw him get a catch in the flat  HenneChart section and here's another clip, this one featuring a nice move to make a man miss: 

With 8.5 yards per reception on average, Dyches has been more of a short-yardage dump-off guy than the seam monster that Chigoziem Okonkwo was for Maryland last season. At 6-2, 220 lbs., he's also probably a player you can feel fine about Michael Barrett covering. Fellow TE CJ Dippre gets fewer targets than Dyches but is mostly used in the same way as a receiver. 

Circling back to RBs, Antwain Littleton II is the Mooseback (while Colby McDonald is more in Hemby's mold). Littleton has TD runs of 2, 1, and 1 yards this season, with one of those carries coming in this game. Here's the I-Formation goal line package featuring Littleton: 

That's FB Joe Bearns III they use as the lead blocker on that play. It's the only deviation from the spread offense and a nice point in support of Brian's theory that every team should have a fullback, no matter how spread their base offense is. 

 

What does this mean for Michigan? 

Maryland boasts a good offense, but I would not describe them as a great one right now. The Terps are a massive step up in competition from the three non-conference opponents, 25th in SP+ offense. Good, not great. There are some areas that will definitely test the Michigan defense, covering those receivers notably, but the flaws are still on display. Pass protection is iffy and Taulia Tagovailoa does not help himself. The QB run dimension and the ability of Tagovailoa to scramble are going to also represent challenges of some kind to the Michigan defense, but it's worth remembering the massive splits for Maryland a year ago. The Terps were a fine football team against low level competition. Against the top end B1G teams, the offense (and Taulia specifically) flopped. This Saturday is a test for both sides in this way. 

The other area where Maryland challenges a team like Michigan is tackling. The Terps like to get playmakers out in space and let them do the work. Their receiving backs directly challenge LBs, and in every phase of the game, Terp skill position players have the ability to pick up 20 extra yards if you blow a tackle or two. Junior Colson, Michael Barrett, and the safeties will be presented with a test of their tackling chops. 

I am curious to see whether Maryland throws it down the field more often like they did against Charlotte/Buffalo, or if they stick to the shorter stuff that worked against SMU. Regardless of what the plan is, we will learn a decent bit about the secondary, a healthy amount about the tackling of the defense, and the defensive line will be tasked with shutting down a run game that flourished last week. I'm less intrigued by the latter because Maryland's run game wilted against high level teams last year, but if it doesn't on Saturday, perhaps that's something.

It's a bit of a black box game, where I can see scenarios in which Maryland rips off some big plays but is mostly wrapped up, scenarios where they consistently move the ball, and scenarios where they get manhandled. There are players with real talent here, but the issue I tend to have watching the Maryland offense is that the full outcome is less than the sum of the parts. The lack of instinct in Taulia's game, occasional drops from the WRs, and an avalanche of penalties constrained their offense against SMU despite scoring 34 points. They need to make fewer mistakes against Michigan to have success, one would think.