Aazaar Abdul-Rahim on beating Wisconsin, Cardell Williams, whether he deserves Maryland football's permanent head coach

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Everything that head coach Aazaar Abdul-Rahim said after Maryland football's comeback win vs. Wisconsin:

Opening Statement

"I'm extremely excited and really happy for the Maryland fan base, and as well as for these young men, what they endured. We talked about it... just how the season has gone and how we went to our second season. And the biggest thing I think that we talked about this week was we went from family, identity being family, and now when we talk about from family, we went to brotherhood. And brotherhood is holding everyone. Like family, sometimes you got some family members that they my family, but you're not proud about that. But when you talk about brotherhood, it's about someone bringing somebody else up to to their standards. And literally what you've seen out on the field today was big brothers taking care of little brothers. You've seen a lot of brotherhood. I was really happy to see that. But again, we expect to win. Every week. Like that's how we prepare. That's the mindset. If I waver in that, it trickles to those guys. And they expected to win, and it didn't go the way we wanted it to go in every aspect, but we did expect to win."

On Malik Washington inactive, Cardell Williams performance

"Malik got banged up last week with lower body injury, so we were really cautious with him during the week. He did some things during the week. He was able to throw the ball, move it around, so it's not a long-term injury, but one thing that I'm never going to waver from is taking care of my kids. If he's not all the way healthy, it could put him in harm's way as a quarterback. It's not like he's a [defensive] lineman. We made the decision right before the game to kind of hold him out. And with Cardell, a funny story about him because one, he's a senior, right? He's a senior kid that came with obviously, yeah he had aspirations to play, but he understood that he was coming in as a backup to Malik. And as the season kind of went on, like literally the first week, he was one of the first persons I called in my office because I didn't like his body language. I didn't like kind of his demeanor and some of the decisions that he was making off the field. And I told him, I said, 'hey, you're quitting. You're quitting on yourself right now, and you never know.' And I didn't. I really was just one of them talks, you know, but you never know when you're going to be needed to win us a football game. We put him on a different type of academic plan. He he had a zero tolerance plan, and he grasped it. And you've seen him on the field; his body language changed, and lo and behold, man, the blessing that he had to. One, I'm happy for him that he had an opportunity to play in a Power Four football game. So I'm happy about that. But also, it's a testament to how we prepare as a full staff and how we literally man infuse confidence in individuals where it is the next person up. Like we're not going to sit there and lay down just because Malik can't play. It's adequate guys that -- Cardell's played a lot of football at Tulsa and Sacramento State. So I'm really, really happy that he was able to excel and I think he he might have set a record today as far as completion percentage. It's crazy. That's what's up, man. Happy for him.

On Cardell's accuracy, 19 consecutive completions

"I think it comes from protection, comes from wide receivers making great plays, and then obviously, we spend a lot of time and really trying to figure out what this young man does well. And what he does well is he's very accurate in intermediate, more ten and under, and he's accurate actually deep. I should say he struggles a little bit in the intermediate. He's special as far as what he can do with his feet. So we were excited that Wisconsin hadn't played that type of quarterback this year. So we put in a lot of things that we were hoping to be successful with offensively with a lot of things. Sometimes the unknown is a secret weapon for you."

Whether Aazaar Abdul-Rahim believes he's earning shot as full-time HC

"You want the company answer? In all honesty, I'm really -- I can't think about that right now. I'd do a disservice to these young men. We're going to LA. We're going 3,000 miles away in literally probably five or six days. A good opponent, a really good opponent, and I'm not respecting an opponent if I give you an answer and thinking about things that one, are way out of my control, that I can't really worry about. What I can do is try to give you know our fan base and our young men the best position to be successful, and that thing, it'll pretty much work itself out."

On being able to flip the script in late game

"I think you just said it, that B word, believe. They believe. They believe that as long as it's seconds on the clock, someone can make a play. We're a good team. I keep saying like it is some talented individuals. And they took turns showing the fan base and obviously you guys, how good they are. And I think it's a lot of things. I think it's Terp Alley. I think it's competition. I think it's beating in over the head about a family atmosphere, playing for something bigger than yourself. I think all of that stuff, the whole high school coach where you don't even know who you got on your team, you just got to figure out how to win. And I think that's important. I think our preparation plays a part in that as well."

11 penalties in the win

"Unacceptable, first and foremost, not gonna be tolerated. Obviously, we put the mirror up. I thought, I thought we put the mirror up pretty good for last week, but again, immaturity at its best. Just turned 19 years old yesterday, and it's not just him. [Jaylen] Gilchrist made a poor [play], and then we had we had one on the sideline, so unacceptable. And to be quite honest, I think teachable moments are always better when you have a win behind it. So all of them is teachable moments. We don't accept that. We're built on discipline. That's part of our team and technique is discipline. So it's unacceptable. Again, we'll get it fixed."

What the AD should take away from the two sin

"Jim and Diana's been great to me. I mean, I sometimes want to talk. They're always texting me and asking me, what do you need? And I sometimes. I want to just sometimes make up something because I don't need anything at the time. So I want to make up something because they ask me that every day. But my point is, like, I have the support that I need, and my job is to keep our team together. Obviously, my job is to put the best product on the field and my job is to really help these young men. And that's all I'm really focused on right now."

On Trey Reddick's game-winning sack, defense

"We're in total alignment, defensively. Myself, Zac [Spavital], [James Thomas]. We were on the staff together the last three years and we literally were talking through how we would do things if we had the the pen, so to speak. Fortunately, I was named the [defensive coordinator] for four days where we were able to sit down and really go through the roster and really put all of our beliefs and how we wanted to play defense on the board and obviously and create almost a new style of defense. And I think Zach is doing an extraordinary job calling the defense. JT, Coach Thomas is -- you don't see a lot of the things -- he's keeping everyone together. JT was the outside linebacker coach, special teams coordinator, as well as he's a safety coach. So he touches a lot of different people, and he's a valuable piece in that whole product. But, from a player perspective, the kids, we have talent on defense, obviously, but they're totally bought in. And the success in the game is a byproduct of what we see every day when we at practice, how hard they play, how tough they are, just enduring certain things, and the discipline level, them doing their job at a high level. This is one of the first games where I can truly say the defense was the defense that we envisioned, like first quarter, second quarter, third quarter, fourth quarter. You take away a couple of penalties, but we didn't give a lot of explosives up, and it wasn't just all bend [don't] break. We were creating a lot of havoc, in my opinion."

On the messaging and execution to close game

"I think we see it in practice, putting those guys as much as many situations as possible, where the game is a bit of a routine. I think we do that. I think the other thing is is just keeping practice as competitive as possible. And to be quite honest, the offense was dominant in Terp Alley this week and so the defense, like I'm looking at them, like, what's up? But they came to play. They believe that somebody's gonna make a play. And that's probably more powerful than any speech I can give or any type of play or diet that you diagram up. Like, they knew going out there that they were going to try to take the ball."

On three takeaways to seal the win

"My reaction? Man, I was pretty happy. I was pretty happy. They literally, Trey is is such a great athlete. He routinely makes those type of plays in practice. The way he runs, he can rush, he can cover, he can check people. He's a very valuable piece of our defense. And again, I wasn't expecting it, but I definitely take the turnover. Just happy for him, extremely happy for him, happy for the team. I thought we put ourselves in a position to win the football game with that turnover."

On Cardell's success, role in the offense in the future

"It's a great question. Can't answer it right now. Obviously Malik is still a big part of what we do, but we're going to try, again, we'll put the best product on the field that we can. The whole thing is about winning, right? So we'll do whatever we have to do. If Cardell, it's with his feet, it's with you know a short RPO type of plan, getting our speed in space, like area space and one in space. We'll do whatever we need to do to win the football game. And obviously, if he gives us the best situation to play, then that's what will happen again. We'll just kind of take it at the beginning of the week, seeing where Malik is. But very, very, again, I'm extremely happy for Cardell, man, because everybody deserves these moments."

On Cardell's final two drives, AAR's messaging to him

"No, I left him alone. I left him all the way alone. I didn't want to say a good thing, bad thing or inspiring, whatever. Just kind of let him be a quarterback. Again, he's an older kid. He's not a freshman. So I expect him to really triumph in those moments.

On the postgame message to the team

"So I told them at halftime that we're going to have to take this game and that was kind of the message is that regardless, it can't be whether it's penalties or whatever it is, we have to take the win. That's the Maryland Terps. Nobody's going to give us anything and that was the message. And I literally told them they're so close. I felt this last week. I felt like we had a chance to win, that we had them in where we wanted them. We won the middle eight last week. We won the middle eight this week. So literally, if you just go out and literally mitigate risk on offense and take the game, so that was the message. And lo and behold, that last play, that's what we did. We took the game, Trey took the game, took the game from them, and gave it to us, and we capitalized on it."

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