Mike Locksley updates Maryland football's progress midway through 2025 fall camp

Ahmed Ghafir
5 days ago
6 min read

Updated: 4 days ago

Just over the halfway point of fall camp, Maryland football head coach Mike Locksley updates his team’s progress, talks about his freshmen, the trenches and more:

On QB Malik Washington’s status midway through fall camp

“Good thing, he's been back and has done individual work here and we're progressing him back in a return to play mode. He's ahead of schedule. I can say that really like what I've seen in terms of him and what we've been allowed to do with him and I think he's on track.”

On Pep Hamilton’s imprint on the offense

“Pep was brought here very intentionally by me because his background and being able to create the running game. Everybody knows that we can put the ball in the air and we've had great success with skill players on the perimeter, but to win in the Big Ten and to elevate like we've been talking about, it's going to take being able to run the football. If anybody who knows Pep’s background from Stanford to Indianapolis to Michigan again, he's always had an acumen of being able to develop tough-minded run-oriented offenses that I think will complement us.”

On going to the Ravens game

“I think, what it is and what I've learned is we've made that trek up to Baltimore each of the six seasons, the seven seasons I've been back here, and it's almost a rite of passage of how we do training camp, but any time kids can see it done at the highest level of what it looks like. And the Ravens have been great hosts for us, allowing us to be on the field pregame and to see how pros warm up. And I think if you get a chance to see it, it makes it a little easier for us as coaches to reinforce maybe, hey, this is what we're telling you, and then you get a chance to see it. And these are guys seeing Corey Bullock start, seeing Beau Brade, him leading them in tackles that day, seeing guys like Tai [Felton] playing special teams during the course of a preseason game, reinforce a lot of the same principles and values that we have.”

On the freshmen class

“We realized coming in pretty early that we were going to have to rely on these guys with some of the attrition we had, and we had a plan for that. We got a bunch of those guys in early, the guys like Sidney Stewart and Malik and Nahsir Taylor, Messiah Delhomme, they all got in here early and were able to get a spring under their belts. And you're starting to see the fruits of their ability to get in during the spring. Guys like Jaylen Gilchrist, those spring reps really have become very valuable for us as we rely on those guys to create the depth.”

On the need to have several freshmen ready to make an impact

“In this landscape it’s really important because these guys are going to be thrust into roles immediately. And because of the new landscape and, again, we've had to pivot as coaches. And the days of me talking about being a developmental program, you haven't heard me use that around here a lot because the development is win now and get these guys ready to play now and expedite their maturation. I brought in some coaches that have that ability because of having to do it at the highest level where you don't know who your team is until two weeks before your first game, being able to get a team of guys to gel, see some of the differences of what we do with their input into our systems here in Maryland.”

On DL Sidney Stewart

“I think it's just he's made up the right stuff. A guy that didn't get to play a senior year. I think that kind of showed him what it's like, how valuable the game of football is. When you have it taken away from you, like he did his senior year, I think it made him that much more hungry. He's a coach's kid, you know, his dad's an assistant basketball coach so he kind of grew up around sports and he's added a maturity level that you don't typically see, especially from a leadership standpoint with young players. And I think both he and Malik both have shown the maturity level as young players that they'll be able to have a positive impact on our team early.”

What freshmen can do to impress in fall camp

“Play consistently. I mean, that's the last thing to come with a young team, a young player, is the ability to be consistent. This was kind of like hell week for us in that we had a night practice and then we came right back with a midday, hot practice where we were able to get some heat work outside, and nobody felt like going today. But as I told them at the end of practice today, I thought I saw a maturity out of this team that when you have to put back-to-back good days together, even when you don't feel like it, they showed a workman-like mentality that wasn't pretty, wasn't perfect but I saw them kind of just keep going and push through tough.”

On WR Jalil Farooq transitioning on the field through fall camp

“I think the first one with Jalil. He's a guy that I recruited really heavily, and have always had a really strong relationship with him. Bringing him back, he adds kind of a DJ Moore toughness to that room and to our offense because he's one of those big bodied receivers, similar to the guy over there [with] the Commanders - Deebo [Samuel] - that has a multi-faceted game that you can - you want to find ways to get him the ball. And he plays with the ball in his hand really, really physically. And that's kind of the nuance of what we want to be on offense, is display a little more physicality and not as much of the finesse, because we know we can do that. But will we be able to hit the curve ball in November and be able to line up and be physical?”

On the offensive line

“They're a work in progress but I see them getting better. And I mean, yesterday probably was - I've been here now seven seasons and the start of seven seasons, and I would say last night was one of those days where I knew we were going to be physical. We had four-minute offense going on, we had a goal-line situation and I like the way the offensive line has responded. Again, not a really deep unit, but what we're doing is finding who the best eight or nine are and putting them in the best positions to go do some great things for us. And it starts with the mentality and the physicality that I know Pep [Hamilton], Hal [Hunter], Wrobo want to get out of that group because as they go, we'll go on offense.”

How Malik Washington, Sidney Stewart have laid the foundation

“Guys like Ruben Hyppolite, the Dante Traders, the Jordan Phillips of the world that got drafted this year. But it goes even deeper to guys like Dontay Demus and Jaelyn Duncan and some of those guys that were the first wave to start our ability to develop players for the next level. The foundation that those 2019, 2020 to 2024 class has done is why I show the excitement that I know we'll bounce back stronger. Because we have that type of foundation and now it's just a matter of us getting the consistency out of an inexperienced, young team that is really, really talented.”

On building cohesion on both sides of the trenches ahead of week one

“That's been the thing we've talked about. And we start talking about developing the brotherhood. And this is - NFL teams face this every year. They lose probably 40% of their team and you try to get your top 20% together. Unfortunately for us, we hit a cycle where the classes that have taken us to those bowl games were seniors and now left the program. And without being able to use the portal to bring in some experience, we had to build from what I call the draft, been through high school players. And we've done that well because we brought the talented high level high school players in but one thing you can't do is give them experience and try to put them in some situations this summer to really tax them, to have them fail, really intentionally to have them fail, so that we can get some of those things out of their system now and allow them to play football when we start our season.”

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