Talk about a juxtaposition of performances.
While Ohio State is fresh off its finest showing of the season, a 52-13 rout of Rutgers on the road, Maryland was on the receiving end of a 51-14 beating handed out by No. 3 Iowa this past Friday.
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The latter resulted in the Terrapins' first loss of the season, and they could quickly find themselves losers of two straight if the No. 7 Buckeyes bring forth a similar effort this weekend to the one they displayed in New Jersey.
Maryland did not start the season 4-0 for no reason, though. If you're unfamiliar with what the Terps have done so far in 2021, here's five things to know before Saturday's Big Ten East showdown.
Best Start in Five Years
In his third season at the helm of the Maryland program in a full-time capacity, Mike Locksley helped lead the Terrapins to their first 4-0 start since 2016.
To follow up a 2020 campaign that featured some signs of life, Maryland upset West Virginia in Week 1 with a 30-24 win, and decimated Howard 62-0 the following week.
The Terps last had a 4-0 start to the season in 2016. Photo: (Tommy Gilligan-USA TODAY Sports)
Although struggling against Illinois may not have been a positive indicator, the Terrapins gutted out a 20-17 victory on the road in their conference opener on Sept. 17. Down 17-10 in the fourth quarter, Maryland rattled off 10 points in the final two-minutes-and-change to leave Champaign with a Big Ten win on a last-second field goal.
Before the momentum came to a screeching halt against Iowa on Friday, the Terps remained undefeated through Week 4 with a 37-16 win over Kent State that saw Maryland outscore its MAC opponent 30-3 in the second and third quarter.
Maryland was certainly not favored to top fifth-ranked Iowa this past weekend, but the 51-14 defeat was not exactly a confidence-builder heading into a road trip to Columbus. Still, the Terps already have more wins than they did in the past two seasons, and with just two more wins, they’d equal their best season win total since the program’s first year in the Big Ten.
11 Turnovers in Past Three Games
Through the first two games of the 2021 season, Maryland had not turned the ball over a single time. In the past three weeks, that has changed in a hurry.
The Iowa game might have been an outlier, but even before turning the ball over a whopping seven times against the Hawkeyes, the Terps had given the ball away a pair of times in each of the two preceding contests.
No. @HawkeyeFootball doing what they do to teams.
— Big Ten Network (@BigTenNetwork) October 2, 2021
INTs have the Hawkeyes up 34-7 in the battle of unbeatens. pic.twitter.com/cs81Ryr17m
That means Maryland has now committed 11 turnovers in the past three games alone, which is six more than the Buckeyes did in their first five games of the year.
Of the seven that took place on Friday, six Maryland turnovers were interceptions, and five were thrown by starting quarterback Taulia Tagovailoa. The Terps’ QB had thrown just one all season before that, and as we’ll expound upon below, Tagovailoa had shown much more good than bad prior to Friday’s nightmarish showing.
Tagovailoa Was Red Hot Before Iowa
In his first year at Maryland, Tagovailoa showed true flashes of potential in surprise wins against Minnesota and Penn State in 2020. However, Tua’s younger brother also had two three-interception performances that landed on the other end of the spectrum entirely.
That inconsistency appears to have followed Tagovailoa into 2021, as his five-pick night stood in stark contrast to a red-hot start to the year that had plenty of promise through four games.
#TouchdownTuesday with @tauliaa12
— Maryland On BTN (@MarylandOnBTN) September 28, 2021
Watch the @TerpsFootball QB's TD passes . pic.twitter.com/qwNRvzioyK
Even after a 16-for-29 night against a stout Iowa defense, Tagovailoa still has a 72.2 percent completion rate on the season which is a testament to several impressive outings to start the year. Tagovailoa completed better than 81 percent of his passes in a 274-yard, three-touchdown day against Howard, and that was just one of three contests in which he threw for three scores in the first four games.
With three games of 300 or more yards passing, including a 384-yard day against Kent State, Tagovailoa had been leading the Big Ten with an average of 335 yards through the air four games into the year.
Tagovailoa still managed to throw a pair of touchdowns against Iowa, but the former Alabama quarterback was benched in the second half nonetheless. Reece Udinski may have had a more accurate performance throwing the ball, but he added to the interception total for Maryland, and shouldn’t be expected to start against the Buckeyes.
Even after Friday, Maryland still has the third-best passing offense in the Big Ten, and former five-star LSU decommit wide receiver Rakim Jarrett remains a threat to make big plays against just about any defense.
Tied For Most Sacks in the Big Ten
Ohio State’s starting offensive line hasn’t given up all that many sacks this season, but the Maryland defensive front specializes in getting after opposing quarterbacks.
Unlike the Buckeyes’ own season sack total (14), which is inflated by a nine-sack night against Akron, the Terps have had consistent success in getting home to bring down the passers of their foes in 2021.
The University of Maryland leads the Big Ten in sacks.
— Maryland Football (@TerpsFootball) September 26, 2021
Here are five of them. #TBIA pic.twitter.com/thOWgB4itM
Maryland’s 18 sacks are tied with Michigan State for the most in the Big Ten, and the Terrapins have not tallied fewer than two sacks in any one game this season. Maryland had three against West Virginia, two against Howard, six at Illinois, five against Kent State and a pair against Iowa.
The Terrapins' pass rush is no one, two or even three-man band, either. Ten different Maryland players have sacks this season, and six have at least two. The two sacks leaders for Maryland are 290-pound defensive end Sam Okuayinonu and 6-foot-4 outside linebacker Durrell Nchami, who each have three apiece through five games.
Not all of Maryland’s defensive statistics are impressive, as the Terps rank in the bottom five or six teams in the conference by several metrics. But the pass rush has certainly been a strength thus far, and Maryland will enter Columbus with more sacks than any team Ohio State has played to this point.
Just One Close Game in All-Time Series
Up until 2018, Maryland’s history against the Buckeyes had gone much the same as Rutgers. In the first four meetings between the two programs, Ohio State averaged a 39-point margin of victory, with the combined scores totaling 225-69.
With J.T. Barrett leading the Buckeye offenses in 2016 and ‘17, Ohio State put up 62 points in back-to-back blowouts against the Terps, who scored just 17 points combined in the two matchups.
Ohio State outdid itself in the most recent meeting, as last year’s game was canceled due to COVID-19, when Justin Fields and company hung 73 on Mike Locksley’s team in a landslide 59-point win.
The one outlier in the all-time series, of course, is 2018’s memorable all-offense affair wherein the Buckeyes topped the Terps 52-51 in overtime. Dwayne Haskins threw for 400 yards, J.K. Dobbins ran for 200, two Buckeye wideouts topped the century mark and all of that was just barely enough to eke out a win.
The Ohio State defense may have seemed susceptible to giving up 51 points to a particularly prolific offense early in the 2021 season, but after the most recent performances by each team, it’s no surprise that the Buckeyes are favored by 21 on Saturday.
