Former starting specialist Jack Howes enters the transfer portal

Ahmed Ghafir
Apr 23
2 min read

Maryland football special teams coordinator Andre Powell will likely have a new starting kicker when the team takes the field this fall for the 2025 season after junior Jack Howes entered the transfer portal on Wednesday.

Howes was 11-of-16 with a long of 48 yards in 2024 and ends his time with the program 24-of-35 with one blocked field goal and a career-long of 49 yards.

Maryland also signed former Oklahoma kicker Gavin Marshall ahead of the 2024 season while Powell has monitored the transfer portal with kickers currently available, but the Florida native ends his time with the program after struggling with consistency over the last two seasons as the starter.

“Jack is on par of what I think of Chad Ryland can be,” head coach Mike Locksley said back in 2023. “I know that a lot of people were down on the ones he's missed but going into the week he's dealing with a little bit of an injury. And I was torn between whether to kick him, not kick out. He came to me and said coach, I'm good. You know, he said it may not look pretty but I'll do it. And he's worked through kind of the issues he's had and you know, made a 48 yarder and I thought okay, he's back. But then I think because of the distance of it is why you didn't see him think much about dealing with some of the lower leg extremity stuff he's dealt with last week. And so I think on some of the shorter kicks maybe he didn't come through because he bangs the ball. His foot makes contact, he's got a big leg. And I think in an effort to kind of compensate for what he's been dealing with his lower and lower body stuff, it got into his head a little bit. Well, I think he'll be healthy this week. We kind of shut him down early to let things kind of calm down. I think he's a really good kicker for us and what you saw last week isn't who he was, but the reason it was still a little bit of an injury.”

Howes was previously named the Big Ten Special Teams Player of the Week after his 24-yard field goal cemented Maryland’s road win vs. Nebraska in 2023, while his 49-yard field goal came in the Music City Bowl win vs. Auburn.

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