Daxx Garman is used to taking a backseat. He has spent six of his past eight years watching his football teams play from the sidelines.

He doesn’t want that to be the case in College Park. The fifth-year transfer is in a three-way battle with senior Caleb Rowe and redshirt junior Perry Hills for the Terrapins football team’s starting job under center.

The Terps are the third team Garman’s been a member of as a college student, equaling the three squads he suited up for ­­— or tried to — in high school. While Garman has played in just nine games since his junior year of high school, he said his exposure to different playbooks and opponents has readied him for when he does get an opportunity.

He said he hopes that chance comes with the Terps this season before the ever-twisting roller coaster that seems to be Garman’s football journey closes this winter.

College Park is Garman’s final ride.

But Terps coaches, teammates and fans alike don’t know what to expect yet from the new signal-caller in red and black. He has less than a month to prove he deserves his first opening-day start in college.

IN AND OUT

Garman stood on the sideline with a concussion week 11 last season at Oklahoma State. All he could do was watch as Mason Rudolph burned what was supposed to be a redshirt freshman season and took over the Cowboys offense for the team’s final three games.

Garman had lost the only first-string quarterback job he’d had since his junior year in high school.

Ten weeks before, Garman had been in the same position when he replaced injured starter J.W. Walsh. It was the redshirt junior’s first opportunity to start in nearly half a decade, and he went on a tear.

The Oklahoma native tossed 10 touchdowns to five interceptions in his first five games under center to lead the Cowboys to five straight wins.

“We were throwing some deep balls, and we were getting a lot of press coverage,” Oklahoma State offensive coordinator Mike Yurcich said Tuesday. “He’s a deep-ball thrower.”

But things soon soured, as they seemed to at the rest of Garman’s football stops. He countered his hot first impression with two touchdowns versus seven interceptions in the Cowboys’ subsequent 0-4 slide.

His concussion, coupled with Rudolph’s late success, forced Garman back to a backup role.

The fleeting upheaval was nothing new.

ON THE MOVE

As a freshman and sophomore in high school, Garman played for Carl Albert in Midwest City, Oklahoma, though he never earned a start. So he transferred to Jones High School, where he threw for more than 2,000 yards and 23 touchdowns and accepted an offer to play for Arizona.

But midway through Garman’s undefeated season at Jones, administrators ruled Garman ineligible, because he did not complete his transfer documents. Jones forfeited most of its season, and Garman and his family moved to Southlake, Texas.

Garman prepared to play his senior year at the prestigious football factory Southlake Carroll High School, his third school in as many years. But community displeasure about Garman’s arrival — Carroll is known for developing homegrown quarterbacks through its football camp — resulted in the state’s University Interscholastic League Executive Committee ruling Garman ineligible for his final prep season.

They determined the Garman family relocated to Texas solely for athletic purposes, a move prohibited by the governing body.

So started Garman’s wait for another starting job.

He redshirted his true freshman season at Arizona as the third-string option behind current St. Louis Rams quarterback Nick Foles. A coaching and system change after his rookie year in Tucson prompted Garman to transfer to Oklahoma State, where he sat out a year per the NCAA’s transfer rule and then resumed backup duties as a redshirt sophomore.

Despite the twists and extensive time away from the field on game days, Garman continued to pore over notes and film, Yurcich said, and he never cracked a joke at practice, taking “a business approach.”

“He has a quiet confidence about him,” Yurcich said. “He’s the kind of guy that you feel is understanding the game because of the time he’s investing and his concentration level.”

But the effort and focus weren’t enough to keep Garman in Stillwater.

He found himself in a free fall yet again, plummeting to third on the Oklahoma State depth chart. So he opted to switch schools for the fifth time since his sophomore year of high school, putting him in a quarterback competition in College Park.

Daxx Garman

‘A FOOTBALL JUNKIE’

Garman might as well have moved into the Gossett Football Team House this summer. Besides attending his summer classes, Garman has been a constant presence around the team and in the weight room.

Coach Randy Edsall describes him as a “football junkie.” Offensive coordinator Mike Locksley and tight ends coach and recruiting coordinator John Dunn call Garman a “gym rat.”

He starts his first workout at about 6 a.m. After attending his classes each day, he returns for another 4-5 hours of exercise and film study. He might take a break for food, but he’s quick to come back to the tapes.

Often times, he gets his receivers to study alongside him, and they break up their afternoon classroom sessions with 7-on-7 practice.

“To be successful at this level at the quarterback position, it has to be a full-time job,” Garman said. “That’s the way I like to treat it.”

When Garman doesn’t have any teammates around to collaborate with, he searches for Locksley.

Before Garman arrived, Locksley could carve out a two-hour window each afternoon to leave his office for lunch. Now, Locksley often spends his break answering Garman’s questions about the Terps offense and football in general.

When the two aren’t together, Locksley responds to Garman’s constant inquiries via text messages.

“He knows this is a big year for him and so he can’t have any days off,” wide receiver Taivon Jacobs said. “He can’t take a break because the moment he takes a break, somebody else is working.”

NOT AN INSURANCE POLICY

This summer has been Garman’s first extensive time on the East Coast, but aside from a pair of cowboy boots, his Terps coaches and teammates say it’s tough to tell he’s new.

He has put that football acumen the Terps’ staff lauds to use in trying to maneuver what Yurcich calls another “brain teaser” in his college tour.

His soft-spoken, reserved personality had gelled in the Terps’ quarterback room — all three first-string options have become good friends — but the semantics of the playbook pose Garman’s biggest test.

“[He has to] make sure that their ‘peanut butter and jelly’ doesn’t mean ‘ham and cheese sandwich,’” Yurcich said of the spread of schemes Garman has internalized over the years.

So far, his strong arm, the same one that threw for 370 yards and four touchdowns against Texas Tech and earned Big 12 Player of the Week honors less than a calendar year ago, has impressed his teammates in their 7-on-7 summer drills.

While coaches weren’t able to see him in a competition setting until training camp started Monday, Edsall said he “didn’t bring [Garman] in here to be an insurance policy.” And Garman didn’t accept Edsall’s offer assuming he would hold a clipboard.

Garman has ingrained himself into another foreign environment, rises before the sun and badgers Locksley every day in anticipation of putting up a fight against Rowe and Hills in the preseason.

He wants a shot at the starting job as his roller coaster of a football career nears the exit line.

“You take all the opportunities there you can and make something of it,” Garman said. “That’s why I’m here.”