Wide receiver Kerry Boykins could only watch as quarterback Perry Hills’ desperation throw on fourth and 18 sailed out of the back of the end zone. The incompletion ended the Terps’ final drive on UConn’s 39-yard line. The Terps lost to the Huskies, 24-21, on Saturday.
The Terrapins football team often ends practice with a bit of role-playing.
It imagines it’s down three points and out of field-goal range with two minutes remaining on the game clock. The objective? Score a touchdown and win the game. If that’s not possible, try to split the uprights and force overtime.
It’s been a tough drill for a young Terps offense this season. In fact, coach Randy Edsall called it “one of the things that we haven’t been good at.”
That became clear Saturday.
The Terps were down, 24-21, to Connecticut with 3:29 left in the fourth quarter. They were facing first and 10 on their own 42. Despite trailing the entire game, they needed just a few key plays to steal the win.
Quarterback Perry Hills completed a 10-yard pass to wide receiver Stefon Diggs on third down, bringing the Terps to UConn’s 32-yard line. They were a few yards away from giving kicker Brad Craddock an opportunity to match the 45-yard field goal he hit seven days earlier at Temple.
But then the Terps went backward.
Hills rushed for a 3-yard loss, and the Terps struggled to regroup. About 19 seconds elapsed before they could line up and get situated for the next play.
After Hills let more precious seconds tick as he checked the sideline for an audible, the freshman found a wide-open Kevin Dorsey near the first-down marker.
Dorsey dropped the pass, though, putting the Terps in a third and 13 situation.
“We had a receiver on the sideline and if he catches the ball we don’t need to worry about time because we still had two timeouts,” Edsall said. “That’s where we as coaches need to continually teach, coach and instruct these guys to understand those situations. If we catch that ball and burn a timeout, we still might have the opportunity to try a field goal.”
That opportunity would never arrive. The Terps lost 4 yards on a third-down bubble screen to Dorsey. Hills’ Hail Mary to wide receiver Kerry Boykins soared past the end zone, and the game ended with UConn quarterback Chandler Whitmer kneeling as the game clock ticked to zero.
There would be no game-winning touchdown. No Craddock field goal to send it to overtime. Just what-ifs.
“At the end of the day we have to get better because we had it on the field today, and we couldn’t score,” offensive lineman Justin Gilbert said of the Terps’ final drive. “[The final two minutes] are something we definitely have to get better at.”
It was a learning experience for an offense that leans on freshmen in several key skill positions (Hills, Diggs and running backs Wes Brown and Albert Reid). After committing eight turnovers in their first two games — both wins — the Terps are realizing that mistakes don’t suffice against superior competition. They’re figuring out how to handle pressurized situations, how to close out comebacks.
“Everything isn’t going to happen as planned. Good things are going to happen, bad things are going to happen,” Diggs said. “As we progress over the course of these weeks, we’ve just got to get better at it.”
They’ll likely need to if they hope to avoid a blowout at West Virginia this Saturday. After all, the Mountaineers aren’t Temple or William & Mary. They don’t allow miscues to go unpunished.
“The two-minute drill is definitely something we’ve got to work on in practice,” Gilbert said. “We’ve got to get better as an offense.”
letourneau@umdbk.com
