Perry Hills wasn’t content watching the second half of Saturday’s homecoming matchup with N.C. State on a TV screen in the Terrapins football team’s training room. With his team down, 10-3, at halftime, the freshman quarterback approached coach Randy Edsall and asked to strap on a brace and continue competing.
Never mind that Wolfpack linebacker Rickey Dowdy’s illegal block from the back had just sent Hills’ knee backward. Never mind the rookie, who was thrust into the starting job after C.J. Brown suffered a season-ending ACL tear in August, had to be carted off the field in the waning moments of the first half of an eventual 20-18 Terps defeat.
Hills was willing to do whatever he could to help his team stay atop the ACC — even if it meant risking his own safety.
“That’s what you love about him,” Edsall said in his teleconference yesterday. “You love that he’s competitive and all those things.”
That competitiveness hardly ends with Hills, though. It’s a trait pervasive throughout Gossett Team House, one that’s become this young squad’s defining characteristic more than halfway through Edsall’s second season in College Park. No matter the circumstances, it will play hard the full 60 minutes.
That mantra has perhaps never been more evident this season than during Saturday’s second half. While Hills grappled with a potentially season-ending injury, a host of reserves carried the Terps to the brink of a landmark victory.
Devin Burns, the former wide receiver who moved to quarterback when Brown was lost for the year, came off the bench to spark a stagnant offense over the game’s final two quarters. He used his speed and deceptiveness to open up lanes for running back Wes Brown, who finished with 25 carries for 121 yards — the first time the Terps have had a 100-yard rusher in a game this season.
Before Saturday, Burns had only seen the field twice all season. The redshirt sophomore spelled Hills momentarily at West Virginia and entered briefly at Virginia to offer the Terps a change of pace under center.
But against the Wolfpack, he played with the poise and confidence of a skilled veteran. Burns used a combination of option reads and screen passes to chip away at the N.C. State defense and engineer touchdown drives on his first two second-half series.
When he dashed 2 yards into the end zone on a bootleg with 3:33 remaining in the third quarter, the announced crowd of 40,217 burst into uproar, rejoicing as the Terps cut the Wolfpack’s lead to just 17-15.
Of course, Burns was merely part of the Terps’ shocking comeback. Wide receiver Marcus Leak found room to run on screen passes and finished with a season-high 94 receiving yards.
Tight end Dave Stinebaugh blocked a Wolfpack punt early in the third, allowing reserve wideout Levern Jacobs to recover the ball in N.C. State territory. And a makeshift offensive line, the same one that allowed five first-half sacks, bulldozed the Wolfpack’s front seven for long stretches throughout the second half.
“We’ve been stressing that we need to get the run game going to try and open up the pass game and vice versa, and I think the [offensive line] did a great job,” Burns said. “So I just came in and did what I could for the team.”
Caleb Rowe did much of the same. The freshman signal caller, who hadn’t seen a single collegiate snap before Saturday, stepped on the field in the game’s waning moments to orchestrate the two-minute drill.
He nearly directed the game-winning drive, too. Rowe found Kevin Dorsey for a 17-yard reception, scampered for an 11-yard gain and let wide receiver Nigel King — who hadn’t recorded a catch yet this season — turn a short dump pass into a 33-yard catch.
All in all, the second half was a breathtaking display of confidence and will. The best screenwriters in Hollywood couldn’t have scripted it any better: Two reserve quarterbacks come off the bench and lead an inexperienced group to the edge of a season-defining victory.
But there would be no storybook ending. Kicker Brad Craddock’s 33-yard field goal attempt with six seconds remaining hit the left upright, sending N.C. State’s bench streaming onto the Byrd Stadium field with a two-point win.
Maybe that ball striking yellow iron will be the lasting image of Saturday’s heartbreaking defeat. Maybe it will be Hills writhing in pain on the Byrd Stadium field after an illegal block sent his knee wayward.
But Saturday was about far more than heartache. It was about a team that came together when it mattered most. It was about a group that refuses to break — even under the most trying of circumstances.
“We competed; we didn’t give up,” wide receiver Stefon Diggs said. “Things happen; can’t do much more than cheer on your teammates and keep your head up.”
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