Mike Locksley on Maryland football's bye week plan, fixing drops, trust in QB Malik Washington

Ahmed Ghafir
Sep 24
2 min read

The bye week gives Maryland football a chance to get back to full strength including starting cornerback Jamare Glasker, who missed his second consecutive game after being inactive vs. Wisconsin. But for head coach Mike Locksley, that also gives his young roster a chance to self-correct early in the season as the staff emphasized areas of growth across the roster ahead of the week.

“We gave every player one part of their game that we want them to improve upon during the bye week and what we practiced [Tuesday],” Locksley said on The Sports Junkies. “We’re practicing [Wednesday] and [Thursday] then we’ll get on the road and do some recruiting but the thing about this team is because we’re so inexperienced and young, it’s a lot like a soldier during their time off. They’ve got to clean their weapons and have them ready to go for the next battle. And that’s kind of what we’ve got to do – get healthy, clean our weapons, sharpen our tools. For some of these young players, some of it is reinstalling some of the things that maybe we haven’t executed at a high level so it’s mostly cleaning up the things we’ve got to clean up.”

That of course includes true freshman quarterback Malik Washington, who Locksley noted self-correct during the game as he connected with Shaleak Knotts on a 62-yard touchdown three quarters after missing Kaleb Webb on the same route. Locksley emphasized that Washington “needs those reps” after missing the bulk of fall camp, but that 62-yard pass capped off a 99-yard drive to cement the road win. And how it started was an indication of Locksley’s trust in his true freshman quarterback.

“If you want to know what type of trust we have in the kid, we put the ball in the air at the one-inch line and I can remember during the game, Pep saying ‘hey coach, do you want to sneak it to get it off or what do you want to do?’ I said ‘you trust him like I do, right? Well, let’s take a shot.’ And the kid made the big play, off-platform throw to the back, checkdown and got us out of the endzone. A lot of trust in him as a young player because of the maturity he’s shown.”

One area for Maryland to clean up is drops after suffering six in Saturday’s 27-10 road win as Locksley noted “a lot of it is fundamental.”

“When you look at it, guy’s trying to run before they catch the ball, guys trying to make plays before they get the ball. So we’ve just got to get back to the fundamentals of looking the ball into the cup, catching it first then running. These are the things that when these guys get opportunities they want to make plays, but we’ve got to make those plays, especially when you have those third-down drops. Those are like turnovers for us.”

Related Links