Turtledroppings.com – Maryland Football And Basketball Blog

This summer season is flying along, and before you know it, yours truly will be boarding a plane for San Francisco to see the Maryland Football opener against Cal.  While I am getting a little more excited each day, I am still hanging on to what is left of summer up here in New England.  But enough about that, we do have summer football, and with summer practices, you get summer scrimmages.

It appeared summer scrimmage version 2.0 was going to focus on the running game, and it seemed all of the backs enjoyed some success.  Here comes that little red flag again.  Did the offense really have success, or is the run defense that bad?  I will be very excited to take on another team here in the near future.

To start with Gary Douglass impressed Friedgen by racking up a scrimmage high 122 yards on 17 carries, against the first team defense.  See my concern about the rushing defense?  To go along with Douglass’ big day, Morgan Green added 56 yards and one impressive, multiple tackle breaking touch down.  I don’t know about the rest of you, but I am really pulling for Morgan to make a big impact this year.  I don’t know why, but I just feel like we need the local kids to become big stars so future generations of local kids will want to come to Maryland.

To go along with those two, Da’Rel Scott added 33 yards on only 4 carries, and Davin Meggett added 45 yards on 7 carries with one TD.   In my mind you are going to see a lot of Scott, mixed in with who ever is hot out of Meggett, Green and Douglass rotating in.  I don’t know if there are enough carries to keep them all happy, but one thing Friedgen likes to do is run the ball.  Provided the offensive line can run block, they will all get their chances.

In the quarterback department, Chris Turner continues to have a good preseason, going 13 of 20 for 113 yards with one pick and one TD.  For the first time all summer, Jamar Robinson seemed to struggle a little more then he succeeded.  His stat line was a very unimpressive 5 of 14 for 59 yards.  I am really hoping he gets a good amount of action against the JMU and ETSU’s of the world.  It is absolutely imperative he gets some live action this year early.

One final position that seems no one wants to claim is place kicker.  Walk on Mike Barbour, has now twice all but wrapped up the job, only to keep the door wide open by missing kicks late in scrimmages and practices.  Barbour connected on his first four from 30, 36, 39, and 45 before missing from 42, 45 and 46.  Meanwhile, freshman Nick Ferrara was good on both attempts from 45 and 37, while also handling kick off duties.  I would expect Friedgen to give Ferrara every chance to win this job seeing how Barbour keeps shooting himself in the foot so to speak.

So there you have it, Sunday’s scrimmage in a nutshell.  Look for more updates following each practice.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 24th, 2009 at 3:57 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.