ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Before facing Michigan, the Maryland football team admitted production would be tough to manage against the nation’s best defense. The unit coach DJ Durkin led last year touts perhaps the top front in the country. It features defensive hybrid and Heisman Trophy candidate Jabrill Peppers and cornerback Jourdan Lewis, whose performance in 2016 has unfolded as one continuous highlight reel.
So with a 1st-and-goal on its second drive of the game, Maryland wanted to capitalize. After all, the Terps already trailed, 14-0.
Instead, quarterback Perry Hills rolled out for a checkdown to the one-yard line, and that’s where their forward progress stopped. The Terps suffered a three-yard loss on the ensuing rush. Then they committed a false start. On third down, Hills took a sack. Kicker Adam Greene punctuated the sequence when his 29-yard field goal attempt clanged off the right upright.
Maryland didn’t run a play inside the Michigan 10-yard line for the remainder of the 59-3 loss.
“They outplayed us in every facet of the game,” Durkin said.
The Wolverines defense forced Maryland into tough conversions, while Michigan’s offense, under quarterback Wilton Speight’s lead, racked up 660 yards, averaging 10 per play against the defensive scheme Durkin used to build his status as one of the game’s top young coaches on the home sideline of the Big House in 2015.
A year after he orchestrated the effort that helped Michigan shutout Maryland, 28-0, in College Park, Durkin watched his former program display the qualities that make it a contender for a College Football Playoff berth in the winter.
“You get kicked in the gut over and over again,” Durkin said. “I don’t know. It’s bad.”
One of the Terps’ blows came on the first play after their failed red zone possession.
Hills hit wide receiver D.J. Moore for a first down, but the redshirt senior took a hit, though it didn’t draw a flag from the officials, and Wolverines defensive end Chase Winovich drove the left side of his upper body into the ground. Hills left two games and missed another with a right shoulder injury earlier in his redshirt senior campaign.
Hills lay on his back as trainers tended to him, and Durkin came over from the sideline. He walked off moments later, finishing his outing 4 of 4 for 73 yards in about 15 minutes of action.
Quarterback Caleb Rowe took his place for his first snaps as the signal caller this season, as freshman Tyrrell Pigrome flashed his electric skills in the preseason to earn the top backup job while Rowe recovered from an injury.
“They never really officially told it to me,” Rowe said of replacing Hills as the top option among the Terps’ four co-backups on this week’s depth chart. “They just told me to stay ready, and if something happens, they’d call my number.”
Rowe took over in front of the crowd of the announced 110,626 fans in Michigan Stadium and completed 12 of his 23 passes for 203 yards and two interceptions.
Before the two second-half picks, though, Rowe tried to ignite Maryland’s attack. In the waning seconds of the second frame, he connected on a short pass with Moore, who streaked up field. A Michigan defender, however, caught him from behind, and the sophomore stumbled to the one-yard line as time expired.
“That’s great defense and not allowing them to be in until they’re in,” Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh said. “That’s a great quality of a defense.”
Michigan had little trouble finding the end zone, recording points on 90 percent of its possessions and never punting. Speight, a first-year starter who earned the job in the preseason, continued his season of efficiency and flash with a 19-of-24 performance for two touchdowns and 362 yards, a personal-best mark.
He powered the Wolverines’ combination of aggression and trick plays to capitalize on the voids Indiana exploited with a 650-yard outing against defensive coordinator Andy Buh’s group in the Terps’ loss last week.
It positioned the Wolverines to enter the final three games of their regular season with an unblemished record and left Durkin shaking his head in his press conference as he tried to explain the showing that leaves his squad departing his former home to return to his new one still in search of bowl eligibility.
“We’re a fragile team,” Durkin said. “There’s a lot of things we need to do to grow up as a program.”
