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This installment of Meet the Newbies brings us to Marcus Whitfield.  Marcus is a less heralded recruit than some of the other incoming players, but as has been shown time and time again, the star system doesn’t necessarily mean much to Maryland coaches.  There have been plenty of surprise players leave their mark on the Terps Football program.  Personally, I see that as a real testament to the coaching staff that they truly give everyone a chance to earn some playing time, and that is all you can ask.

Marcus comes to the Terps from Northwest High School in Germantown.   He is a 3 star linebacker from Rivals, and 2 star number 63 overall strong side linebacker from Scout.  His senior season stats include  39 tackles, nine tackles for loss, one forced fumble and one fumble recovery. 25 receptions for 372 yards and three touchdowns as he also logged time as a TE.

An interesting story about Marcus is he was recruited to play linebacker by Dave Sollazo after his junior season, even though he only played TE to that point.   The Terps brought him to one of the camps, and after the camp he had an offer from the Terps.  Following that offer he canceled a visit to Morgantown to see WVU and committed to Maryland.  So despite the solid numbers he had only one season of “seasoning” at LB probably leading to his lower national ratings.  Keep an eye on Marcus’ progression through the depth chart once he has been on campus a couple of years.  I just have a feeling.

Now on to everyone’s favorite segment of Meet the Newbies:  Birthdays!  Marcus was born on December 15, 1990.  Also on that date in history Rod Stewart married Rachel Hunter.  I wonder how Rod feels about the divorce whenever he sees the Stacy’s Mom video?  Of course he probably replaced her with a newer model.  Also on this date in history Sylvester Stallone Married Briggite Nielson in 1985.

So with that we officially welcome Marcus to Maryland and hope his experience with the Terps is everything he is hoping for.

Extra Droplets

I didn’t want to spoil any of the excitement from Terrapins Rising, but I think my favorite part of episode one was the interview with Jamar Robinson.  I loved how he felt pressure to compete against guys “who weren’t even there” for the backup position.  He seemed to really take it personally that he needed to show the coaching staff that he knew the playbook and was capable of leading the team offensively.

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 19th, 2009 at 6:23 am 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.