Takeaways from Maryland football’s 38-14 overpowering of UConn
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Maryland football won its 20th consecutive non-conference clash against UConn on Saturday, but the result didn’t come easily for the Terps.
Down running back DeJuan Williams and facing a spirited Huskies defense, the Terps had to fight to get on the board early in East Hartford. In the end, Maryland asserted its presence and powered past Connecticut for the well-earned, 38-14 victory.
Here are three takeaways from the Terps’ road opener.
Washington wakes up
For the first five quarters of Maryland’s football season, it appeared its most important player might have been going through a sophomore slump.
After a shaky start for Malik Washington in the Terps’ season opener, Maryland appeared to want to get its star quarterback rolling early. Six of Maryland’s first seven plays were passes, but he averaged just four yards per completion on those attempts.
In the end, 14 of Maryland’s first 15 plays were passes, something head coach Mike Locksley attributed to an RPO-heavy gameplan in Williams’ absence that UConn countered by stacking the box.
But whatever type of play was dialed up, the throws themselves weren’t convincing — Washington’s footwork looked off on some plays, and balls were delivered to back shoulders rather than hitting receivers’ in stride.
Everything changed with the first play of the second quarter. Washington tried to run for a fourth-down conversion and took a massive hit.
It was an ill-advised, unnecessary hit — and a hit that might’ve just jolted him back into form.
From that moment, Washington went 24-of-27, including a stretch of 18 consecutive completed passes, the best such streak for the Terps since at least 1953. With receivers schemed into space, Washington was able to make completions at multiple levels.
Even his mistakes were successful: two errant throws on the Terps’ second touchdown drive drew pass interference calls that extended the 92-yard march.
“The throws he made, some of them it wasn’t even to me, it was like, ‘Wow, he’s crazy,’” wide receiver Chris Durr Jr. said.
When Washington was allowed to take a shot downfield, he seemed to have largely regained the touch he showed early in his freshman year. The quarterback went 5-of-6 on passes 15 or more yards downfield — one completion came courtesy of a spectacular one-handed grab by Durr, but the others were manageable snags. Webb was barely overthrown halfway down the field on the sole miss.
“Malik really operated our stuff the way we needed him to,” Locksley said. “Getting him in the rhythm is really important, and it’s more flow than it is tempo.”
Front six clamp down on defense
UConn entered the weekend having cleared 300 yards on the ground in its season opener and looking like its scheme could replicate some success against a larger opponent. However, the Terps limited UConn to just 2.2 yards per carry and 67 total yards on the ground Saturday.
One big factor leading to that success was Maryland’s ability to neutralize UConn’s dual-threat quarterback Kalieb Osborne. He finished with 13 rushing attempts for 30 yards — 26 of which came on one play.
Maryland was disciplined in keeping Osborne within the tackles. On several occasions, CJ Smith spied on the quarterback and cut his adventures from the pocket short.
With Osborne kept honest, the Terps’ line had more time to do damage in the passing game as well. Maryland finished with five sacks, including two from nose tackle Derrick LeBlanc.
“Being able to rotate … up front with six guys, and they’re all big-body, heavy-handed guys, that really gives us the ability to play hard for four quarters,” Locksley said. “And that’s part of the finish we didn’t have a year ago … because of the amount of bodies and depth we created, we got guys fresh in the fourth quarter.”
UConn’s running backs found some success early, but the Terps bore down before the game progressed and the Huskies had to abandon the run almost entirely.
Special teams shaky
Maryland’s special teams hasn’t found itself in any critical situations through two games that weren’t particularly close, but there have been some signs of concern for the Terps in getting the third phase of the game going.
Bryce McFerson took three punts against UConn and averaged just 37 yards per attempt. One 47-yarder was beautifully fielded at the one-yard line by Harry Dalton, but the other two had lots of field to fly deep over, and they fell double-digit yards short of McFerson’s career averages.
Meanwhile, kicker Sean O’Haire sent a late 37-yard field goal wide left, just the fourth miss of his career.
One bright spot for Maryland is the improvement on kickoffs; freshman Eli Fulcher is able to put kicks into the end zone more routinely than any kicker the Terps relied on in 2025, and Maryland has allowed an average of just 18 yards per kickoff return.
However, the Terps have yet to return a kickoff themselves, something that can limit negative plays but removes the possibility for more positive plays as well.
The ACC showed its intent in games against the Big Ten during Maryland’s drubbing of UConn — Boston College beat Rutgers, Duke beat Illinois and Wake Forest beat Purdue. Virginia Tech has all sorts of momentum rolling into College Park on Sept. 19, and the Terps will almost certainly need to call upon the special teams to help their efforts in the margins. They’ll need better than what they’ve gotten in the first two weeks.
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