Maryland will kick off its sixth spring practice on Saturday afternoon as veteran offensive lineman Spencer Anderson looks for the Terps to build off the momentum from the Pinstripe Bowl win into the meat of the offseason.
“Obviously being here since 2018, fiddling with kind of subpar seasons and dealing with hardships with coaches leaving and entering all the time, it definitely felt good to kind of get this bowl under our belt,” Anderson said on Glenn Clark Radio. “It definitely gave us momentum to go into the offseason training and we kind of see if we follow our five pillars—toughness, effort, relentless, pride, and success. If we follow the first four, we obviously reap the benefits of that success and it was just great for all of the guys who we all came in with, and all the new guys actually. They got to see what believing in coach's philosophy. We all reap the benefits.”
There was a possibility the Terps would need to reshuffle their starting offensive line heading into the offseason, but position coach Brian Braswell got the trifecta—Jaelyn Duncan, Johari Branch and Spencer Anderson all announced their return to the program. The trio of announcements bolstered the Terps in the trenches, an area that fans have seen gradual improvement with each passing year under head coach Mike Locksley. Anderson added that “we all had our own personal decision, but at the end of the day you kind of want to leave a legacy here.”
“Even though obviously, like I said, we had our first winning season in X amount of time, but we want to leave something greater and show people that are to come that you can achieve the bows you always dreamed of. Growing up as a kid, you always see other college football highlights and Fiesta Bowls, and all the other important ones that everybody looks up to when they’re little. We all kind of made the common agreement to come back and sort of just come back and buy in. I mean, it's really that simple. I mean, obviously I know with me and Jaelyn Duncan and Dontay Demus, we all had NFL aspirations and talking to NFL Players Association and hearing from different scouts through player personnel, we all decided, even though that we are able to take that next step, we wanted to make sure we had gotten everything out of where we came here for and get everything accomplished that we said we would get when we came here.”
Heading into 2022, Anderson believed it was “really simple” what the Terps needed to do to take the next step.
“Our margin of error, penalties, turnover sacks, dropped passes. Eliminating all of those and keeping them under 12% will lead us to success. I mean, the proof is in the pudding. We had statistics on offense. I know we were 1-6 when we didn't reach our margin of error but when we did, we were obviously better. The only one game we didn't reach our margin of error was when we played Kent State. And obviously that's not going to equivalate to wins when you're playing when you're entering the gauntlet against the Ohio State's and Michigan's of the world. So, I mean, honestly just taking care of the ball and controlling what we control and taking the next step to try to eliminate most mistakes that we that we can ball and on defense is rallying to the ball and making their punter have a day.”
Off the field, Anderson hasn’t been shy about chess skills after he finished undefeated on his school’s team while at Bishop McNamara. But while the Maryland native enjoys chess off the field, Anderson drew the parallel from the game to the gridiron and how it’s connected.
“You have eleven moving parts on the field and if ten are doing the right thing and one's doing the wrong thing, your likelihood of success goes down. So, if all the pieces aren't moving together rather, as were on the board, if you're only thinking about one piece on the board and you're not thinking about another, you'll end up moving a pawn and your queen would get taken and you wouldn't even realize. That's why I feel like it relates to football because I mean, it's calculated movement.”