The leaders of the Maryland Football team, as well as the assembled media, came together yesterday for the Terps' annual media day. New head coach Randy Edsall made the opening comments, and he showed right away that he will not hesitate to be honest with the media, even if it means being a little critical of some parts of his team. All quotes via The Maryland Athletic Site.
"I feel I know who we are offensively, who the people are at this time in terms of a 2-deep and those things. Defensively, I'm not as happy and as pleased or as far along in that assessment and evaluation of the people that we are going to need and who's going to be there for us. There're a lot of still unanswered questions from a defensive standpoint than offensively."
I think that is pretty much to be expected. Arguably the best player on the team, Danny O'Brien, plays the most important position on the offensive side of the ball. When you have that luxury, the rest of the team on that side of the ball can just kind of fall into place.
The defense will understandable take some more time, particularly because Edsall moved so many people to new positions after he took the reigns. It's hard for players to get used to a new defensive scheme, let alone a new position. Edsall has proven that he is capable of putting effective defensive units on the field, so I expect him to sort this all out before the Hurricanes come to town. Edsall summed up the performance of his team like this.
"The biggest thing is I have a level of expectation that is very, very high. I don't know if we'll ever get to that level, but we're going to keep shooting for it because no matter whether we get to that level of expectation is always going to go higher. That's kind of where we are after eight days, after four practices in full pads."
And that's the way it should be. No matter how much the team improves, Randy Edsall will always want them to get better. The only question that remains is if he can get to the point where he is happy with the team that he is putting on the field against Miami on the fifth of September.