Maryland football quarterback Perry Hills laughed, fresh off Saturday’s win against Rutgers. He acknowledged he required rubber bands and duct tape to stay healthy.
In a season where he’s left four games early with shoulder injuries and missed another two, the redshirt senior was pleased to survive the bowl-clinching victory.
The setbacks he’s endured entering his final game at Maryland Stadium have created a new sense of frustration throughout a campaign Hills has set career-best marks. But Saturday evening in Gossett Team House, Hills smiled, knowing he had time to heal before his final game in a Terps uniform.
“I told myself before the game unless both my arms fall off, I’m just going to battle through it,” Hills said. “Because everyone else is putting it on the line, what makes me any different? So I was just going to go out there and give every single thing that I have to the team.”
That’s the approach coaches have lauded throughout Hills’ last season. He’s completed 66 percent of his passes. His 10-to-3 touchdown to interception ratio is the best of his career.
The production comes a year after the Pittsburgh native tossed 13 picks, and the Terps led the country with 29. He rotated starts with reserve quarterback Caleb Rowe, and the instability contributed to former coach Randy Edsall’s midseason firing.
Hills has admitted this season felt different. The new staff simplified its offense and structured the schemes to fit his strengths. He earned the starting job in fall camp and never relinquished it, displaying the efficiency and command his reserves struggled to maintain in his absence.
“It’s been pretty rewarding,” Hills said. “But again, the frustration sets in a little bit because you start saying, ‘What if, what if, what if?'”
The absences started Sept. 17 against Central Florida. A few weeks later, he left the Terps’ loss to Penn State early and sat out the ensuing matchup with Minnesota.
He returned for perhaps his best performance of the season — a 200-yard, two-touchdown win against Michigan State — a week later, but he endured two more injuries in blowouts to Michigan and Ohio State to start November.
His outing against the Buckeyes ended after the second series. He entered the locker room for evaluation on his left shoulder after a season of rehabilitation on the right one.
“Man, God must not want me to play or something,” Hills thought. “If I’m going through one bad shoulder, he’s going to go ahead and try to give me another.”
But two weeks later, offensive coordinator Walt Bell said the Terps treated Hills’ availability against the Scarlet Knights like an ace pitcher’s in Game 7 of the World Series. Hills may not have perfect health, Bell said, but if he wasn’t risking added injury, the Terps wanted him to perform on short rest.
“Knowing this is a one-game season for us,” Bell said days before the win, “you play your guy.”
So he suited up and completed nine of his 15 passes for 96 yards. Though Bell admitted throughout the season the Terps restructured their rushing plans to reduce Hills’ contact, he gained 41 yards on the ground, took four sacks and managed the backfield that produced 318 yards.
Before the action, Hills said he was “taking everything in” during the Senior Day ceremony. He earned coach DJ Durkin’s perhaps longest hug and message, a moment the signal caller had little doubt would happen.
As he sat out against Nebraska last week, Hills noticed during pregame warm-ups Cornhuskers quarterback Tommy Armstrong Jr. would miss his Senior Day game with a hamstring injury.
Hills felt for the Nebraska star and vowed not to let his final College Park appearance unfold the same way.
“Anyone that has spent more than 10 seconds with Perry,” Durkin said, “knows that there was no way he wasn’t playing this game.”
