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Where Maryland football landed in 2024 preseason bowl projections

Writer's picture: Ahmed GhafirAhmed Ghafir

The college football season will officially kick off this upcoming weekend with Georgia Tech and Florida State set to kick off the first game in Dublin, Ireland. Maryland football will have to wait another week before kicking off their season with UConn headed to College Park for the first time since 2012 as head coach Mike Locksley looks to extend the program’s home-opener win streak to 19.


Maryland remains a 20.5-point favorite across sportsbooks with the preseason win total set at 6.5, but a pair of outlets expect the Terps to secure bowl eligibility for the fourth consecutive season.


Brett McMurphy of Action Network released his preseason bowl projections on Monday with Maryland projected to face Iowa State in the Guaranteed Rate Bowl on Dec. 26. Meanwhile, Jerry Palm of CBS Sports projected Maryland to face Ohio in the Detroit Bowl on the same day. Maryland has never faced the Cyclones before while Ohio took down the Terps, 21-14, the last matchup in College Park back in 1997. Athlon, however, had a more familiar opponent and destination with Maryland and NC State projected to square off in the Pinstripe Bowl on Dec. 28.


Maryland’s appearance in the 2023 Music City Bowl marked the first time the program reached a bowl game in three consecutive seasons since 2006-08, while the win marked the first time the program had won three consecutive bowl games. Maryland will now look to win at least seven games for the third consecutive season, marking the first time the program has done so since 2001-03, but they’ll have to do so with a new quarterback under center for the first time since 2019.


After wrapping up the second and final scrimmage of fall camp with the defense shining and the offense building chemistry, head coach Mike Locksley has managed the ongoing quarterback battle where a starter isn’t expected to be named until the first-team offense takes the field on Aug. 31.


“I enjoy the competition aspect of it. It’s what really has gotten our program to where it is today. When you bring in people to compete, I think it brings out the best and that’s kind of how we’ve recruited,” Locksley said of the position battle last week. “So, I mean in a perfect world, I’d love to have Taulia Tagovailoa back for another year. Yeah, it makes it easy but as we know around here in Maryland, nothing’s ever going to be easy and we expect that to make a tough decision. And I’m glad to be able to make a tough [decision] ’cause if it was easy, that means we probably didn’t have the competition that we would want to have or need to have to be a good team or be a good quarterback room.”


Maryland’s season opener will be broadcast on FS1 with kickoff set for noon.


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