Matt Barnes explains second coaching stint with Maryland football

Ahmed Ghafir
18 hours ago
3 min read

Maryland football announced its finalized 2026 coaching staff back on Feb. 18. Less than one week later, head coach Mike Locksley had a vacancy to fill after Chili Davis, the newly tabbed special teams coordinator, accepted an assistant special teams coordinator role with the Minnesota Vikings. But it didn’t take long until a candidate materialized for Locksley once news broke of the latest vacancy, one who “grew up a huge Terps fan.”

“I get a text that, it's a cryptic text, basically like, 'Yo coach, what's up? And I didn't know. it said Matt, and I'm looking at my phone like 'Matt?' And I was a little afraid to answer because I didn't know which Matt it was,” head coach Mike Locksley said. “Because when you got job openings, you get a lot of people sending you messages. And I said, 'Barnes?' And when the text came back Matt Barnes, I was like, 'yes.’”

For Barnes, it was a vacancy that was attractive enough “to reach out and text coach Locksley within 30 seconds of reading that the job had come open, I'll tell you that.”

“I went home to make lunch and I was sitting there talking with my wife and just kind of waiting for the food to cook and I was scrolling through my phone and reading that the special teams coordinator at Maryland had moved on, and I think within 60 seconds, I had typed out a text and had it sent to coach Locksley,” Barnes said. “It wasn't long after that that we had sort of a handshake deal, so to speak.”

Barnes joins the program after two seasons as the co-defensive coordinator at Mississippi State while he spent the two seasons prior as the defensive coordinator at Memphis. He also has Big Ten experience after a three year stint at Ohio State where he oversaw the special teams unit in his first two seasons, but it also wasn’t his first first taste of the conference.

After a defensive analyst role at Michigan in 2015, his first stint in College Park materialized beginning in 2016 where he took over both special teams and linebackers for three seasons. But his first stint in College Park also marked a homecoming for Barnes, an Urbana High School grad who went on to become a team captain at Salisbury.

“Maryland's home for me,” Barnes said. “My family's here, great pride in this area and the football that's played here, and a tremendous amount of respect for Coach Locksley and the culture that he's built, the roster that he's assembled and the type of person that he is. So yeah, when I saw it come open, it was an easy one.”

Barnes also becomes the fifth on-field assistant with local ties alongside Aazaar Abdul-Rahim, Randy Starks and Kyle Schmitt, giving the staff “a guy that knows his way around this state.”

“He really helps take a little pressure off of myself and the Aazaars of the world, because he is well-respected in this area by the high school coaches,” Locksley added. “And we feel still pretty strongly about what this area has and the fruits of the type of players in this area, and being able to add Matt to our special teams. And I mean, that's just a small part of the type of coach he is, but also the type of person he is.”

The on-field product remains the focus as Barnes admitted he’s walking into an “unbelievable setup” in Bryce McFerson and Sean O’Haire, but the biggest question is whether Maryland will be able to create explosives in the third phase. Maryland has recorded just two special teams touchdowns under Mike Locksley with the last one back on Sept. 15, 2023 after Braeden Wisloski’s 98 yard kickoff return vs. Virginia.

Maryland has several candidates to take over the role that Josiah McLaurin, Octavian Smith and Jalil Farooq worked to fill in 2025. Ahead of the first spring practice, finding the dynamic returner is the question.

“There's always an understanding of [if] we have a dynamic returner, [then] we will have an opportunity for dynamic returns. If you look at first go around here in 2018 as a special teams coordinator, that was Ty Johnson. Well, Ty Johnson [is] still playing in the NFL. I mean, that guy's pretty dynamic,” Barnes said. “If you have a guy like that back there, it makes the job a lot easier.”

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