The Terps wear their new Maryland Pride 2.0 helmets on the sideline during their 37-0 victory over West Virginia on Sept. 21, 2013.
BALTIMORE — The first time the Terrapins football team debuted “Maryland Pride” jerseys, it was on national TV in a rain-soaked win.
When the Terps wore their “Maryland Pride 2.0” jerseys — revealed at a Thursday night event in Baltimore — it was during another rain-soaked win on national TV.
Wearing their new look, which featured hand-painted helmets and a new look on the shoulders, the Terps dismantled West Virginia, 37-0, on Saturday at M&T Bank Stadium in front of an audience on ESPNU.
“They just hit another home run with those,” coach Randy Edsall said. “I just had to tell all the guys they couldn’t take the jerseys and helmets with them, and they were upset about that.”
Much of the hype and talk in the lead-up to the reveal featured the helmets. People would be blown away, many said, and with the rippling flag effect, it was easy to be impressed.
The uniforms showed up well on the field, too, and the players took notice.
“I’d definitely say the helmets,” said tight end Dave Stinebaugh, who caught his first touchdown pass in for the Terps’ first score. “They took a lot of time and effort to go into those helmets. Looking at them, hand-brushed all of them, something that not many college teams do with a hand airbrushing and all that kind of stuff.”
The impression carried over to the defensive side of the ball as well. Every time a West Virginia ball carrier attempted to cross the line of scrimmage, there was a blur of red collapsing from every which way.
“I didn’t expect all that,” outside linebacker L.A. Goree said. “When I saw the helmets, I was like, ‘Whoa, hand-painted? They hand-painted all the helmets? That’s amazing.’ And the jerseys at first, looking at the jerseys like on the media and on the Instagram, whatever they had it on, I didn’t they was going to be like that, but when I put them on, and we had them pants with the Maryland stripe coming across, yeah.”
As for the rest of the uniform, Under Armour touted its “ArmourGrid” technology, which is supposedly hard to grab for opponents. While there were no clear examples of Terps breaking tackles because of the new material that doesn’t stretch, the players said the uniforms had a different feel so far.
“All Under Armour’s uniforms are pretty good that we have,” Stinebaugh said. “It was definitely a difference today. I liked them personally, a little bit of a different fabric, so they were nice.”
In the end, both products on the field were hard to argue with: the jerseys gained attention while the Terps put together a 37-0 victory over the Mountaineers.
“They were different from the other ones because … they gave us room to breathe,” Goree said. “Lots of jerseys, they real tight, so we can’t really move. It takes some time to get around. But they were loose in the stomach area so we could breathe a lot with our lungs. It was top of the line.”
