Turtledroppings.com – Maryland Football And Basketball Blog

The defense back position has always been important in ACC play.  There are a ton of speed guys in the ACC, as well as all the other BCS Confernces, and when you can’t stop the pass, it creates all kinds of problems.  You end up opening yourself up to the run, and you also become susceptible to giving up a ton of points in a relatively quick period of time.  I’m specifically thinking of the time in 1994 when we were beating FSU at halftime.  It didn’t take long for that potential upset to disappear.  By the end it was hard to phathom that we ever led at all, yet alone as late as halftime.  So locking down solid DB talent is extremely important in our quest to win the Atlantic Division.  Which brings us to:

Eric Franklin.  The Terps didn’t have to travel far to find him.  Eric comes to us via Archbishop Curley High School in Baltimore, Maryland.  While at ACHS, Eric played DB as well as a little TE.  His senior year he recorded 75 tackles with 6 interceptions.  His Junior year he had 99 tackles with 6 interceptions.  After the 2008 season he was named first team all Baltimore City.  Eric checks in at 6’3″ and weighs 190 lbs.  He is expected to fill out to 210 lbs (I wonder what Ralph thinks I’ll weith in 4 years?). 

In addition to football honors, Eric was also named to the Maryland Academic All-State Team.  He held a 4.0 throughout his high school career and plans to major in Civil Engineering.  Now granted, I don’t remember the kind of student athletes we brought in during the 90′s.  I didn’t follow recruiting nearly as close then as I do now, but it seems that there is a real empathis on the type of student coming in.  It seems to me I’ve been writing a lot this summer about GPA’s and intended majors.  So I consider it a good sign that our program is in good hands. 

Of course if we go 3-8 this year, you will come back to this site in December and see a whole rant about “Grades be damned, we need talent!”.  So let’s hope we can find a comfortable balance.  In Eric’s case, it seems like we have found the right mix.  Hopefully he can excel on both the field and in the classroom.

Moving on to birthdays.  Eric Franklin was born in Baltimore on February 12, 1991.  Today we are going to do something a little different.  It may be painful but we are going to go back to 1991 and look at the state of Maryland Football.  In 1991 the Mighty Terps finished a rock solid 2-9.  It sounds bad, but the good news is that one of those wins was over UVA.  The other was a squeaker 23-22 over Wake Forest.  The Terps had an explosive offense that managed to put up over 12 points a game (Good Grief!) while the defense gave up an average of 27.5 points a game.  On second thought, let’s fast forward back to 2009.

Welcome to Maryland Eric Franklin, we wish you a long and productive career!

Extra Droppings:

If someone had approached you in March and offered you a wager that neither David Ortiz or Manny Ramierez would be on the All Star team and they gave you a million to 1 odds, but you had to bet a minimum of 500$.  How many people do you think would have taken the bet?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 14th, 2009 at 5:16 pm and is filed under Maryland Terps Football. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.