The University of Maryland appears to be hanging Randy Edsall out to dry. Reports have surfaced saying Maryland will fire Edsall as football coach, but a timeline for that plan has not been mapped out, and Edsall will coach this weekend when Maryland visits No. 1 Ohio State.
Jeff Ermann of 247 Sports was the first to report the news regarding Edsall. Maryland coming to a decision to move on from Edsall is hardly a surprise given the current state of the program. Maryland is coming off a seven-win season with a bowl loss and is heading to Columbus this weekend with a record of 2-3 following two losses to West Virginia and Michigan by a combined score of 73-6. Things have been so bad in College Park that Edsall had to be informed of a Maryland players-only meeting last week while on a conference call with the media hours after the morning meeting. The writing just might have been on the wall for Edsall to read.
Maryland went from winning nine games and a No. 23 ranking following a Military Bowl victory under Ralph Friedgen to bringing in Edsall and winning six games in his first two seasons. That was followed up by a pair of seven-win seasons and two bowl losses while transitioning from the ACC to the Big Ten. Edsall is far from the only person responsible for the current state of the program, but he will be the first to lose his job over it. But such is life for a college football coach. Nobody will be crying for Edsall, but everyone should keep a close eye on which direction Maryland goes from here.
You may remember Maryland once had current Penn State head coach James Franklin lined up as a head coach in waiting for when Friedgen stepped down. Franklin got out of town before that could happen, accepting a coaching offer at Vanderbilt. Maryland then completely got caught with their figurative pants down, whiffing on one coaching option or another before settling on Edsall. There is potential now for Maryland to make a nice splash with its next coaching hire, and it needs to do just that.
In the same division as Urban Meyer, Jim Harbaugh, Mark Dantonio and Franklin, Maryland needs to bring in a head coach capable of holding his own in the headlines and recruiting and, more importantly, in sideline success. There is potential for Maryland to win some recruiting battles and turn the Terps into a legitimate top 25 program, if it finds the right coach. Who is that, you ask?
Good question. Thankfully, I don’t have to be the one who makes that call.
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