Rising senior cornerback Gerrick McPhearson and the rest of the Terp backfield are working on causing more turnovers next season.
The Terrapin football team’s defense played well enough last season to stay in games. But with a struggling offense, just being solid wasn’t good enough to reach a fourth straight bowl game.
This year’s defense is well aware that to play in late December or early January, it will have to supply game-changing plays.
Last year, the Terp defense forced only 16 turnovers, while the offense gave the ball away 25 times. In three previous winning seasons, the Terps forced 18 more turnovers than they committed.
The defense also allowed game-winning scores on the final drive at West Virginia and Clemson, where one play could have changed the entire season and led the team to bowl eligibility.
“When the big play came around, sometimes we were able to make it and sometimes we weren’t,” linebacker D’Qwell Jackson said. “In the past we most likely made that play.”
Rising senior cornerback Gerrick McPhearson said the defensive backs are catching balls from a jugs machine to improve on the team’s lowest interception total (six) in more than a decade.
“When an opportunity presents itself, you’ve got to make the play then,” McPhearson said. “It’s not that we didn’t have playmakers, it’s that when the play comes your way, you’ve got to make it.”
Jackson, who will not participate in contact drills this spring after undergoing wrist surgery in the winter, is an All-American candidate who will return to lead a hungrier defense into the 2005 campaign.
The Terps arguably have one of the best linebacker groups in the ACC, but they lost some experience on the line and in the defensive backfield.
Shawne Merriman — who led the team with 8.5 sacks — left the team a year early to enter the NFL draft, and rush end Kevin Eli is gone. The Terps will also be without cornerbacks Domonique Foxworth and Reuben Haigler and safeties Chris Kelley and Raymond Custis.
“A good system always allows you to modify and adjust to your personnel,” defensive coordinator Gary Blackney said. “Obviously we’re not going to have a Merriman kind of guy that’s going to step in and play, but there are some good young players slotted [to step in].”
Defensive tackle Conrad Bolston returns at defensive end, and Trey Covington has already impressed coaches on the outside in the first two spring practices.
McPhearson — who ran a 4.21 40-yard dash this winter — started six games this past season and will bring his experience to Foxworth’s spot at the field corner.
Christian Varner, a true freshman who played nickel and dime last season, will likely start at safety.
The defensive players also hope to play well enough to elevate their teammates on the other side of the ball.
“I think we really can set the tone,” linebacker William Kershaw said. “The offense, they’re working hard too, so it’s just going to be a battle all spring.”
Early evidence of the defense’s ability to fire up the rest of the team came Sunday, when Bolston and offensive guard Donnie Woods scrapped after the whistle during a drill.
A few plays later, several members of the front seven and offensive line were involved in another fray that sent both units hopping back to their groups jumping and yelling in celebration.
The scuffles were a welcomed sign of life initially, but Terp coach Ralph Friedgen refused to let it get out of hand, warning that another fight would result in laps when the sides next came together for a drill.
TERP NOTES: Dan Ennis and Obi Egekeze are competing to replace Nick Novak at kicker, and the Terps are looking for Tim Cesa, Derek Miller or Andrew Schmitt to step in for Jon Condo at long snapper.
