Maryland football balancing game, life ahead of Big Ten opener
Monday that his team is doing its best balancing football and life.
“Obviously we’re focusing on right here, right now,” Canada said during his weekly news conference. “We’re playing football, that’s really, really important. Our kids put so much time into the football game they wanted to win. We didn’t get it done. There’s disappointment in that, there’s frustration in that on everybody’s part in our program.
“It doesn’t compare to real life situations that we’re dealing with. Hopefully everybody will respect what I’m saying. Football is important, it’s not important [as a person’s life] in anybody’s program. Obviously we’re focusing on our players and getting better, sticking together, and we’re disappointed that we didn’t play our best.”
Coming off a shockingly bad performance in a 35-14 loss to previously winless Temple on Saturday, Maryland will return to its home field Saturday for its Big Ten opener against unbeaten Minnesota. Canada said Monday that he expects a better effort from his players — and from himself.
“If you go out and play your best and you don’t win, that’s disappointing, but when you don’t play your best, that’s harder to deal with,” said Canada, who continued to take the blame for losing badly as twotouchdown favorites.
Since the team has yet to practice, Canada is not sure about the health of redshirt senior offensive tackles Damian Prince and Derwin Gray, as well as junior running back Lorenzo Harrison III. All three missed the Temple game because of undisclosed injuries. Junior running back Jake Funk will be out for a second straight week with a broken hand.
“All of them we’re hoping they’re going to be back this week,” Canada said. “They’re all planning to be back this week, but a couple of them we thought were going to go [against Temple] and were kind of a game-time decision.”
Their absence was felt in a running game that went from producing 444 yards at Bowling Green the previous week to just 132 yards, 107 from redshirt freshman Anthony McFarland. Quarterbacks Kasim Hill and Tyrrell Pigrome were sacked a combined seven times.
Asked if he was surprised that there appeared to be such a drop off to those who played in place of Prince and Gray, Canada said, “I could go through every play on offense in great detail right now from one to 52 and tell you exactly what happened, but I am going to leave it at, it’s my fault, I’m in charge, I called the plays and it didn’t work.”
The Gophers are off to another 3-0 start under second-year coach P.J. Fleck, whose team will come to Maryland Stadium with painful memories of last year’s game in Minnesota. Behind quarterback Max Bortenschlager, who became the starter after both Hill and Pigrome suffered season-ending knee injuries in the first two games, the Terps won, 31-24.
Though he wasn’t on the Maryland staff for that game, Canada was an assistant at Northern Illinois when Fleck, as well as Ravens running back coach Thomas Hammock, played on a team that came off a summer mourning the death of teammate Shea Fitzgerald and beat Maryland in the team’s opening game.
A day before the Minnesota game, the Board of Regents is expected to release the findings of an independent external review by a South Carolina-based medical consultant looking into the circumstances surrounding the May 29 conditioning test when McNair fell ill.
Canada, whose duties expanded from being the offensive coordinator when Durkin was put on administrative leave during a second external review looking into allegations by ESPN of a “toxic culture” surrounding the team, said that his players need not concern themselves with what the Board of Regents reports after it meets at Towson University on Friday.
“We’re going to worry about the football game,” Canada said. “I appreciate your question and you have to ask it. All we’re going to do is worry about the football game. That’s our job. That’s our charge. And that’s what we’re going to do. And I’ll continue to say how proud I am of our players on focusing on their job, on going to school, on playing football, on grieving [for] Jordan and that’s what they’re worried about.”
NOTE: Canada’s news conference was pushed up a day so that he could attend the funeral today for longtime booster Mary Gossett, who died last week. Gossett and her husband Barry gave $10 million to help build the football team house 20 years ago and recently committed another $21.25 million for an academic and development center for Maryland athletes that will be housed in the new Cole Field House.