Maryland, Ohio State's opponent Saturday, is 5-0. When is the last time Terrapins did that?
The Big Ten East has often, and understandably, been framed this season as a three-team division, with Ohio State, Michigan and Penn State all standing as viable national championship contenders.
Heading into the sixth week of the 2023 college football season, the Buckeyes, Wolverines and Nittany Lions are all undefeated and ranked in the top 10 of the U.S. LBM Coaches Poll.
That trio, however, doesn’t have a monopoly on on-field success in the conference as the calendar turns to October. Indeed, there’s a fourth team in the Big Ten that still has an unblemished record – and this week, it’s about to face its toughest test yet.
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Heading into its game Saturday at No. 3 Ohio State, Maryland remains undefeated and has won its first five games of the season for the first time since 2001.
Though its schedule hasn’t been particularly imposing thus far – its four FBS opponents this season have a combined record of 5-15 – the Terrapins are averaging 38.6 points per game, tied for the 15th-best mark in FBS. That attack is led by senior Taulia Tagovailoa, an Alabama transfer and the younger brother of Miami Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa. In five games, Tagovailoa has thrown for 1,464 yards – good for 14th among FBS quarterbacks – 13 touchdowns and three interceptions while completing 65.7 percent of his passes.
Despite the impressive record and its Big Ten affiliation, Maryland was the first team left out of the most recent Coaches Poll, making it the only undefeated team from a Power Five conference not to be ranked.
With Ohio State, Michigan and Penn State still remaining on the schedule, the fate of the Terrapins’ 2023 season remains a mystery. While a division title seems far-fetched, will this be the season that it beats one or even two of those opponents, the latter of which it has never done in a single season since joining the conference in 2014?
If it’s able to knock off even one of those teams, Maryland’s promising start can become something much more memorable – like what it did the last time it started 5-0.
With the Terrapins putting their undefeated record to the test, let’s look back at their 2001 season, the last time they were in such an enviable position.
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The last time Maryland football was 5-0
In 2000, Maryland football was mired in mediocrity, if not something worse.
The Terrapins were an ACC contender for much of the 1970s and into the 1980s, winning at least eight games from 1973-85, but by the turn of the century, they were in a rut, finishing with a losing record 12 times in 14 years from 1987-2000. After Ron Vanderlinden was fired in 2000 after going 15-29 over four seasons, something had to change for Maryland.
With the hiring of Ralph Friedgen, it did.
Friedgen, a Maryland alum who had most recently been the offensive coordinator at Georgia Tech, wasted little time improving the on-field product. Despite some of their shortcomings under Vanderlinden, the Terrapins had narrowly missed out on a bowl in Vanderlinden’s final two seasons, finishing 5-6 each year. Additionally, he left behind an experienced and talented roster featuring, among others, quarterback Shaun Hill, running back Bruce Perry, linebacker E.J. Henderson and offensive lineman Melvin Fowler.
Given that foundation, Maryland found early success in 2001. It defeated North Carolina 23-7 in its season opener, making Friedgen the first Terrapins coach to win his first game since 1959. From there, they won each of their next four games, including a 32-20 win against rival West Virginia, to move to 5-0 and No. 20 in the Coaches Poll.
Facing a ranked opponent on the road in their sixth game, like this year’s Maryland team will do, the Terrapins squandered a 14-0 halftime lead on the road against No. 15 Georgia Tech and trailed 17-14 in the final two minutes. Hill orchestrated a nine-play, 51-yard drive in 1:53 to set up a 46-yard field goal from future NFL kicker Nick Novak with five seconds remaining that sent the game to overtime. On Maryland’s possession in the extra period, Novak added another field goal, this one a 26-yarder, before Henderson recovered a Georgia Tech fumble on the ensuing possession to end the game.
The win catapulted the Terrapins up to No. 14 in the Coaches Poll and after a win against Duke, they entered an Oct. 22 matchup at No. 18 Florida State at No. 12, their highest ranking since 1984. Their undefeated run ended in Tallahassee, as they allowed 497 total yards and 7.5 yards per play in a 52-31 loss.
While the defeat likely ended Maryland’s hopes of a BCS national championship appearance, its push for its first ACC championship since 1985 remained very much alive. With comfortable wins against Troy and Clemson, it entered its regular-season finale at N.C. State with a 9-1 record.
The Wolfpack, led by a young quarterback named Philip Rivers, put the Terrapins’ dreams in peril. N.C. State led 19-16 with 2:09 remaining, when Maryland, with the ball at its 39-yard line, got one final chance to earn the victory. After gaining only five yards on its first three players, it successfully converted a 4th-and-5. A pair of long completions got the Terrapins to the Wolfpack 8 and once there, Hill connected with Guilian Gary for a touchdown pass with 41 seconds left on a play Maryland hadn’t run all season.
It gave the Terrapins not only the win, but the outright ACC title, making it the first team other than Florida State to do so since the Seminoles joined the ACC in 1992.
"Everybody said we weren't this or we weren't that," Friedgen said after the N.C. State win. "But we beat everybody we had to beat to be champs."
The 10 wins were Maryland’s most since 1976 and doubled its total from the previous season. With it, the Terrapins earned a berth to the Orange Bowl — where they were routed by Florida 56-23 in what would be Steve Spurrier’s final game with the Gators — and Friedgen was named the Associated Press national coach of the year.
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What happened to Maryland football after the 2001 season?
Friedgen was rewarded with a 10-year contract by the university in Dec. 2001 and remained at the school after interviewing with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers for their head-coaching vacancy in Feb. 2002.
The program’s success under Friedgen wasn’t confined to a single, magical season. Maryland actually won more games the next season, going 11-3 and defeating Tennessee in the Peach Bowl, and followed that up with a 10-3 campaign in 2003. It marked the first time in program history that the Terrapins had won at least 10 games in three consecutive seasons.
Maryland dipped from there, going 5-6 in 2004 and 2005. It recovered, winning at least eight games in two of the next three seasons before bottoming out in 2009 with a 2-10 record. In Feb. 2009, James Franklin, the future Penn State coach who was then a promising young offensive coordinator for the Terrapins, was named the head coach in waiting, with the then-61-year-old Friedgen’s contract set to expire in early 2012.
Ultimately, Friedgen wouldn’t even make it that long. Despite engineering a seven-win improvement in 2010 and being named ACC coach of the year, Friedgen was fired by athletic director Kevin Anderson, who described the move as a long-term “business decision” to move the program from “good to great.” The firing came less than a week after Franklin left to become the head coach at Vanderbilt.
Friedgen was understandably angered by the decision, telling a Baltimore radio station in a Sept. 2011 interview that he burned his Maryland diploma. He later clarified that he was joking and had not, in fact, burned the diploma.
“They talk about Maryland pride,” he said in the interview. “They didn't show me a whole lot of Maryland pride, either getting the job or getting fired."
After initially targeting Mike Leach, Maryland ended up hiring Connecticut coach Randy Edsall, who had just led the Huskies to the Fiesta Bowl. He was unable to replicate those accomplishments with the Terrapins, going 22-34. He was fired six games into his fifth season.
From 2011-21, Maryland failed to win more than seven games in a season, becoming an also-ran in the ACC and an afterthought once it joined the Big Ten in 2014. Worst yet, it was at the center of a scandal in 2018, when offensive lineman Jordan McNair died after being hospitalized with heatstroke and exhaustion following a team workout. He was 19. An investigation into allegations of abuse under coach D.J. Durkin found there was not a toxic culture around the program, as had been claimed, but Durkin was fired shortly after.
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Where Maryland football is now
In the years since, the program has recovered. In Dec. 2018, the school hired Mike Locksley, a Washington, D.C. native and former Maryland assistant who had won the Broyles Award, given annually to the top assistant coach in college football, while serving as the offensive coordinator at Alabama in 2018.
Locksley has utilized his deep recruiting connections in the Washington, D.C.-Maryland-Virginia area to build a talented roster and has used his coaching acumen to put together strong offenses. Last season, the Terrapins went 8-5, their most wins in a season since 2010, and has continued that momentum into 2023.
When it comes to Saturday against Ohio State, though, a new barrier awaits.
Maryland has lost eight of its eight meetings against the Buckeyes since joining the Big Ten, losing those contests by an average of 34.8 points. Last season, Ohio State won 43-30 in College Park, Maryland after a scoop-and-score off a fumble in the final minute from the Buckeyes ended the Terrapins’ hopes of a comeback win.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: When is last time Maryland was 5-0? Ohio State opponent off to hot start
