Locksley wants Maryland football to talk less. History shows why. | ANALYSIS

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It is Dec. 9, 2008, inside a packed ballroom in New Mexico’s Student Union Building.

Michael Locksley is being introduced as coach of the Lobos, wearing a cherry blazer before a crowd of fans, students and administrators.

There, the then-38-year-old turns to athletic director Paul Krebs and delivers a promise.

“We may have to add another digit to the scoreboard.”

Nearly 18 years later, the line is almost too perfect.

New Mexico went 2-26 under Locksley, scoring 20 or more points eight times. His teams finished last in the Mountain West in scoring in each of his two full seasons. The high-powered offense never arrived.

This is New Mexico, of course, not Maryland, where Locksley is entering the eighth season of his current tenure. But the moment is worth remembering.

Locksley’s mantra entering this season is to “work more and talk a little less.”

It is a message the coach has repeated in various forms since Maryland’s spring media day in March, through Big Ten media days in July and again at the Terps’ on-campus media day in August. Locksley has connected it to Proverbs 14:23: “All hard work brings a profit, but mere talk leads only to poverty.”

The message is straightforward. After back-to-back 4-8 seasons, Maryland has little reason to make promises.

Probably not a bad idea.

Yet consider the 56-year-old’s track record behind a microphone. His own words have a habit of getting in the way.

Three years ago, Locksley made another declaration.

Maryland was coming off consecutive bowl victories when Locksley arrived at Big Ten media days in Indianapolis and publicly raised the program’s expectations.

“Our program is at a point finally where we can say we’re here to compete for Big Ten championships,” Locksley said. “You haven’t heard me say that in the previous four times I’ve been in front of you guys, but I think now is the time.”

Six days later, Locksley said the program was “on track with where I wanted us to be.”

Maryland went 8-5 that season. It has gone 8-16 since.

The Terps never reached the Big Ten championship game. They never beat Michigan, Ohio State or Penn State during that 2023 season.

Following the 2024 season, Locksley acknowledged he had “lost his locker room” over how Maryland distributed name, image and likeness resources. Asked after last season’s finale why the program had not reached the level he envisioned, Locksley pointed to college football’s changing landscape.

“Three years ago, it wasn’t that,” Locksley said. “It was just starting.”

There is fairness in that explanation.

Maryland entered the NIL, transfer portal and revenue-sharing era at a financial disadvantage. For fiscal year 2025, the Terps ranked last among the Big Ten’s 16 public schools in both revenue and spending. Athletic director Jim Smith estimated in April to The Baltimore Sun that Maryland sits roughly $50 million to $60 million behind the middle of the conference.

When Smith announced in a public letter last November that Locksley would return for the 2026 season, the athletic director promised to provide the football program with the support necessary to compete. Locksley has repeatedly touted those investments this offseason.

Still, after refusing to discuss the “why” following Maryland’s late loss at UCLA on Oct. 18, 2025, and proclaiming himself “not a victim,” Locksley has often cast himself that way.

It’s the resources. It’s the depth. It’s the injuries.

The sport’s new structure, though, has also created avenues for fast turnarounds.

Indiana finished 3-9 in 2023, hired Curt Cignetti and went 11-2 with a College Football Playoff appearance the following season. The Hoosiers then went 16-0 and won the national championship in 2025.

Maryland went the other direction.

By late last season, Locksley was no longer talking about Big Ten championships. He was trying to define progress.

A fifth win, he said before facing a 4-5 Rutgers, would be one more than Maryland earned the year before. A second conference victory would double the previous season’s total.

Asked whether two conference victories represented a low bar in his seventh season, Locksley doubled down.

“That’s called slow progress,” Locksley said, with Maryland sitting 4-4 after opening the season with four straight wins.

“I don’t have a low bar for anything I do in my life,” he later quipped to an unrelated question. “That would be called hope.”

Maryland never reached either benchmark.

The Terps lost their final four games, completing an eight-game losing streak and finishing 4-8 for the second straight season.

After a 38-28 season-ending loss to Michigan State, Locksley acknowledged there had been “no progress in terms of wins and losses.”

Then came the qualification.

Maryland had played cleaner, he argued. By one measure, not much had changed: The Terps committed the fifth-most penalties in the 18-team Big Ten, the same conference ranking as the year before. They did, however, commit six fewer turnovers while forcing four more, finishing tied for second in the conference with 21 takeaways.

Locksley also pointed to young players gaining experience. The record, in his view, did not tell the entire story.

That has become a familiar rhythm.

At media day, Locksley said he was not diminishing that he had coached consecutive 4-8 teams, adding that last season’s 4-8 “was a lot different” than the previous year.

Elsewhere, he said Maryland was “a drive away from being seven wins as opposed to four.”

There is usually logic underneath Locksley’s explanations. Maryland played a young roster last season and was set to return 71% of its production, the second-highest percentage nationally, before edge rusher Zahir Mathis suffered a season-ending injury. Sophomore quarterback Malik Washington leads the returning group. Locksley has also continued to recruit well in the DMV, giving Maryland a young core he believes can grow together.

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That context matters.

So does the record.

And that is what makes his newest message so striking.

Locksley has built something worth believing in. Now comes the part that has eluded him the last two years: turning recruiting wins, returning production and close losses into actual results.

Asked what tangible progress would look like after consecutive 4-8 seasons — and whether it meant finishing with a winning record — Locksley declined to establish a barometer.

“That’s too big of a picture for me to worry about,” Locksley said Tuesday. “I’ll let you guys add it up at the end and answer those type of questions.”

His athletic director has been similarly noncommittal. Asked by The Sun in August whether the season was pivotal for Locksley, Smith said “every year is pivotal” for every coach. He deferred questions about whether success might prompt contract discussions: “Let’s get past Hampton, and maybe I can start thinking about it.”

For now, both coach and athletic director are focused on Saturday’s season opener against Hampton, which finished 2-10 last season.

Locksley has spent years explaining Maryland’s trajectory, its setbacks and the context behind its record.

This season, there is less explaining left to do.

There is only the work.

Edward Lee contributed to this story. Have a news tip? Contact Michael Howes at mhowes@baltsun.com, 410-332-6200 and x.com/Mikephowes. 

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