Terps men’s basketball columnist
A group of reporters watched as Caleb Rowe walked into the visiting team’s media room at Alumni Stadium on Saturday afternoon. There was no noticeable limp, no injury concern.
It didn’t matter he was the last remaining healthy quarterback on a Terrapins football team that had already lost three to season-ending injuries. It didn’t matter his team had just lost, 20-17, at Boston College. Based on his comments after the game, he just seemed excited to have a chance to be on the field.
“I wasn’t really thinking, ‘Don’t get hurt, don’t get hurt,’” Rowe said Saturday. “I was just out there having fun and playing my game.”
He didn’t know then he had torn his ACL on the Terps’ second-to-last play of the game. He didn’t know then his season was already over. But when he woke up with soreness in his knee the next morning and underwent an MRI, Rowe learned he would be the team’s fourth quarterback to miss the rest of the season due to injury.
It’s almost unfathomable. It’s nearly impossible to believe. The Terps started the season with four healthy quarterback options. After Rowe’s injury, they have none left. C.J. Brown tore his ACL in the preseason, Perry Hills tore his ACL in the Terps’ loss to N.C. State on Oct. 20 and Devin Burns suffered a Lisfranc injury in the same game.
Randy Edsall is in his 13th season as a head coach, and he’s never seen anything like this before. In fact, there are probably very few people in football who have.
After eight games, the Terps have more torn ACLs on the sideline than they do active quarterbacks.
“We’ve gotten some bad luck,” Edsall said Sunday. “That’s all I can think of.”
“Bad luck” might not be a strong enough description for what’s happened to the Terps at quarterback this season. To go through two, maybe three quarterbacks in a season due to poor play or injury isn’t abnormal. But to lose four for the season — three in one week — to devastating injuries? It’s unheard of.
But it’s the Terps’ reality.When they host Georgia Tech on Saturday, their starting quarterback will be converted linebacker Shawn Petty. Edsall hasn’t specified how the Terps’ offense will look with Petty as the signal caller, but a very run-heavy attack seems almost certain. Petty, after all, ran a Navy-style, triple-option offense at Greenbelt’s Eleanor Roosevelt High School.
If the true freshman becomes the fifth quarterback to go down with an injury, converted tight end Brian McMahon will take over under center.
Now, the chances of the Terps needing to find a third-string quarterback with just four regular season games remaining would normally be slim to none. But the way things have gone this season, it might not be out of the question.
What would happen if both went down? Would running back Wes Brown be called on to run a Miami-Dolphins-circa-2008 Wildcat offense? Would the Terps insert wide receiver Stefon Diggs at quarterback and just let him do Stefon Diggs things with the ball on every play?
Edsall said he hasn’t thought that far ahead yet. But based on this season’s events, it wouldn’t be a surprise if he starts to very soon.
“I said to somebody, I said, ‘Somebody ought to do some research to see if this ever happened before,’” Edsall said. “It’s pretty much unbelievable.”
To everyone who watched Rowe walk into the media room Saturday, and to everyone who has followed the Terps closely this season, it’s not “pretty much” unbelievable.
It’s just unbelievable.
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