Turtledroppings.com – Maryland Football And Basketball Blog

Last football season was a disaster.  No question.  If you have to ask yourself to think of a bright spot from all the injuries last year, you are likely going to say that the injury to Chris Turner gave Jamar Robinson some game experience against some tough competition. One thing that did was put to rest the year in and year out unknown going into camp.  This year Jamar Robinson is going to be the starter.  There is no open competition for the starting role as they begin camp.  It is Jamar’s to lose.  And in all honesty, from the games we saw last year, I think there is a little to be excited about with Robinson.

Sure Florida State’s defense was very bad last year, but Robinson still gave Maryland a chance to get their first win in Tallahassee.  Jamar also gave the Terps a dimension they haven’t had probably since the days of Shawn Hill and Scott McBrien, and that was a mobile quarterback.  Against Virginia Tech, Robinson rushed for 129 yards, and will hope to use his legs to not only make big plays, but be able to escape possible sacks and turn them into gains.  Robinson may not be the ideal QB to bring Maryland back to an ACC championship, but he is different than Chris Turner.  All reports coming out of the spring early summer camp, is that Jamar is leaps and bounds ahead of where he was last year.  If the coaches open the playbook for him, we might get to see some pretty exciting QB this year.

Now Robinson is not the biggest QB, and if he likes to run around a lot, there is a pretty good chance we are going to see the back up QB at times this year, and as of now it appears Danny O’Brien is going to sew up that position.  He was a Robinson injury away from seeing action as true freshman last year.  He earned the third string status over CJ Brown more because of his knowledge of the playbook than his overall skill.  Brown will likely be the third stringer this year, and he too has gotten a good bit of praise from the coaches over the summer camp so far.  O’Brien is a little more of a pocket passer that can still make some plays with his feet, while Brown might be more known for his athletic ability than is his overall passing skills.  Either way, there is some talent sitting back there at the back up and number three spot.

Also competing for some snaps, is first year player, and early enrollee, Devin Burns.  He joins the Terps out of Georgia and is also a bit of a dual threat QB.   I suspect Mr. Burns will see a lot of time on the scout team this year, but moving forward, he could get into the mix a couple of years down the road.

I hope I put a positive spin on the QB position for Maryland this year.  With Robinson a junior, and two redshirt freshman backing him up, the position is defiantly a bit untested, but there is some talent to be excited about.  The question remains, what can the line do for them this year to help protect them and give them some time to make plays.  stay tuned as we are less than two weeks away from the start of the season.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 24th, 2010 at 10:18 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.