ATLANTA – Throughout most of the afternoon, the Terrapin football team seized the momentum and sent the home crowd into sustained periods of shocked silence.
Even as the Terps cashed in on big plays and shackled the Yellow Jacket offense, there was a sense of déjà vu. This script had been written before – in a couple of the Terps’ 2005 losses – and once again, it came to fruition.
It unfolded in the form of a fourth-quarter collapse Saturday, and, after seemingly controlling the high-powered Yellow Jackets, the Terps fell short, losing 27-23 in front of 51,686 fans at Bobby Dodd Stadium.
“I’m very disappointed right now,” coach Ralph Friedgen said as his voice faded. “I think we let this one get away, and we shouldn’t have. We really shouldn’t have.”
Friedgen’s team took then-No. 18 Georgia Tech (5-1, 3-0 ACC) to the brink of a stunning upset, before turnovers and poor late play sealed the Terps’ fate.
Late in the third quarter, a 32-yard Dan Ennis field goal gave the Terps a nine-point lead and appeared to boost them beyond the reach of the Yellow Jackets and their raucous fans. It seemed to be an upset infused by Josh Wilson’s 100-yard kick return in the first quarter and by a coach who had been predicting his team’s breakthrough moment for several weeks.
“Everybody kinda felt like, ‘Hey, this is going our way right now,'” Ennis said. “We’re playing good, we’re putting points on the board when we needed points, and I think everyone was really positive and really excited.”
Then, the scoreboard light flickered to the fourth quarter, and the Terps’ upset bid was extinguished. Georgia Tech defensive end Michael Johnson sacked senior quarterback Sam Hollenbach on the first play of the fourth quarter – a play that eerily foreshadowed the game’s final moments.
From then on, everything seemed to go right for the team in gold. Terp junior safety J.J. Justice was penalized 15 yards for a late hit on quarterback Reggie Ball, and the Yellow Jackets marched down the field. From the Terps’ eight-yard line, Ball zipped through the defense and into the end zone, cutting the Terp lead to 23-21.
Momentum was swaying away from the Terps (3-2, 0-1), but their next offensive play was disastrous. Junior running back Lance Ball couldn’t secure the handoff fromHollenbach, and the Yellow Jackets recovered the fumble at the Terps’ 17-yard line. Ennis said it felt like “a punch in the stomach.”
“We were going through the whole game without a turnover and then, for some strange reason, we have a bad exchange,” Ball said. “That can’t happen. … That killed us in the fourth quarter.”
With the Terps’ problems snowballing, Georgia Tech delivered another gut-buster two plays later, as running back Tashard Choice darted through a sea of white jerseys for a touchdown that put the Yellow Jackets up 27-23.
Driving into Georgia Tech territory and facing a fourth-and-two, Hollenbach threw an interception, but the Yellow Jackets couldn’t capitalize, missing a field goal. Georgia Tech had left the door wide open for the Terps to grasp “that moment” Friedgen had been talking about.
The moment was there after Hollenbach connected with wide receiver Darrius Heyward-Bey on a short pass that Heyward-Bey turned into a 57-yard gain by evading a couple of tacklers en route to the seven-yard line with less than two minutes left.
After the Terps gained just three yards on two rushes, Hollenbach was sacked on third down and whistled for intentional grounding after he desperately hurled the ball to his right while cascading to the ground. Pushed back to the 19-yard line on fourth down, an offensive line breakdown led to another sack of Hollenbach – this time sealing the loss. Both sacks were by defensive end Michael Johnson, the man who started the Terps’ fourth quarter misery.
Disappointment in his voice and pain in his ribs from the final sack, Hollenbach knew he and the Terps had surrendered a golden opportunity to reach that moment and break through the barriers that had been holding them back.
The final minutes became symbolic of a team that junior linebacker Wesley Jefferson said must acquire a “killer instinct” and be able to finish games instead of letting them slip away.
“I think we kinda felt like that was that moment we had,” Hollenbach said. “We felt like that was the moment we needed to break through, and just a couple mistakes, and we didn’t get it.”
Contact reporter Stephen Whyno at whynodbk@gmail.com.
