Andre Monroe sat tall in a chair in Glazer Auditorium after the Terrapins football team suffered a 52-24 loss to then-No. 20 Ohio State on Oct. 4 and explained he wasn’t slinking down into his seat because he thought his squad was making strides.
“We always improving, and that’s the goal,” the Terps defensive end said. “Improve every day, every game. Keeping walking forward, never walk backward.”
Monroe’s words seem to represent something deeper as the Terps begin the second half of a still undefined season with Saturday’s homecoming game against Iowa at Byrd Stadium. The Terps have vowed to push the loss to Ohio State out of memory, but is the program walking forward or backward?
The answer might lie in the final six games of this season, and it’s likely to dictate Randy Edsall’s future in College Park.
Edsall is in the fourth year of a six-year deal he signed with this university in 2011, and Athletic Director Kevin Anderson should be contemplating whether to offer the coach an extension soon. College administrators rarely let coaches reach the final year or two of their contracts because it makes it difficult to recruit players and hold members of the team accountable.
But Edsall’s tenure here has been as difficult to judge as Amanda Bynes’ personality.
On one hand, Edsall has never beaten a ranked team as Terps coach and has failed to properly prepare his team to play in some of its biggest games. The recent paltry performance against the Buckeyes and a 63-0 shellacking at the hands of Florida State last season are the first examples to come to mind.
On the other hand, Edsall has made progress in each of his first three seasons, and he has shown in the past that he can have success when given time to build a program.
After taking over as coach at Connecticut in 1999, the young sideline general failed to win more than four games in each of his first three seasons, but won at least eight games in six of his next nine seasons with the Huskies. Then he took the team to the Fiesta Bowl in 2010 before departing for College Park.
Edsall won four more games in his first three years with the Terps than he did in his first three with Connecticut, which he eventually took to a Bowl Championship Series game. So what’s his ceiling here?
Maybe with a more established program, Edsall can help the Terps reach national prominence and compete for conference titles. But maybe, especially considering he is 1-25 against ranked teams in his career, Edsall isn’t cut out for success in the Big Ten.
That’s why these next two months will be so telling. With a home game against No. 8 Michigan State on the Terps’ slate, Edsall will have another chance to earn his second career win over a ranked foe. And visits to Wisconsin, Penn State and Michigan allow the Terps an opportunity to cement themselves as a dominant road team.
Of course, as with everything else in Edsall’s tenure, there is another side to the season’s second-half prospects.
The Terps’ schedule is tough, and it’s conceivable that they could stumble to a 1-5 conference finish, which would cause them to miss out on a bowl game and place Edsall firmly on the hot seat.
Perhaps that’s why Edsall is avoiding discussion centering on his first few years in College Park.
“I’ve got enough on my plate with Iowa that I’m not worried about anything else,” Edsall said Tuesday when asked to evaluate his time with the Terps. “If you want to talk about Iowa, let’s talk about Iowa.”
It’s not really Edsall who has to do the evaluating, anyway. It’s Anderson.
Shortly after taking the reigns of the athletic department, Anderson decided against renewing the contract of coach Ralph Friedgen and hired Edsall. The series of moves will always be tied to Anderson’s legacy with the Terps, and this offseason — with Edsall’s contract situation looming — he can make his next vital decision.
So I’ll try to make this difficult decision as easy as I can for Anderson. If the Terps win four or more of their final six regular-season games this season, Edsall should receive an extension. He’ll have improved in each of his seasons in College Park and will have tallied a winning record in his first Big Ten campaign.
If the team wins two or fewer conference games, Edsall shouldn’t receive an extension and Anderson should consider firing him. In that case, the Terps will have regressed in the win column despite bringing an experienced team into the season.
And if the Terps win exactly three games? Well, let’s just give The Diamondback’s 2015 football columnist the chance to tackle that one.
