Maryland coach Mike Locksley breaks down matchup against 'great Michigan team'

With a win over No. 6 Michigan (9-1) in College Park this weekend, Maryland (5-5) football would become bowl eligible and wouldn’t leave it to when the Terrapins go to Rutgers for the final game of the regular season.

Third-year head coach Mike Locksley said this week that none of his players have gone to a bowl game, with the program’s last postseason appearance coming in 2016. To clinch a berth this weekend would be a huge feat, Locksley said, especially considering how good the Wolverines are.

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“We’re all motivated to do it against a great Michigan team,” he said. “To me, probably one of the better offenses that we will face, in terms of balance. Those guys are very good up front, their offensive line. I think their center [sixth-year senior Andrew Vastardis] is a phenomenal player and really does a good job of leading the way up front.

“They’ve got some capable guys on the outside. No. 6 [sophomore wide receiver Cornelius Johnson] is a guy that’s made a bunch of plays for them. I know they’re banged up at the running back position, losing [second-year freshman] Blake Corum [to a lower-body injury], who started out having a great year, but they’re still Michigan. They’ve got players that are very, very capable — as we’ve seen the last couple of weeks — to step in and continue what they do.”

One of the players that he’s referring to is redshirt sophomore running back Hassan Haskins, who has carried the ball 58 times over the last two weeks since Corum went down, gaining 324 yards on the ground in that span. The self-proclaimed workhorse has accumulated 598 of his 985 rushing yards after contact this season, according to Pro Football Focus (PFF). He’s only 15 yards shy of becoming the Wolverines’ second running back to hit the 1,000-rushing-yard mark since 2011.

“Hassan Haskins is just a big, athletic guy, and makes a lot of big plays,” Locksley said.

The way Haskins plays might just be a microcosm of the way the Wolverines have shaped their offense this season.

The Maize and Blue are gaining 442.4 yards per game (30th nationally) and scoring 34.9 points per contest (25th). Locksley is the second straight Michigan opposing coach to notice a shift in the Wolverines’ offensive philosophy, with the Maize and Blue leaning on a run game that is producing 225.1 yards per game (13th).

“They’ve kind of adapted that personality that you saw in a lot of Coach Harbaugh’s time at Stanford and even when he first got to Michigan,” Locksley, who coached with third-year Michigan offensive coordinator Josh Gattis at Alabama, said. “It’s kind of like they’ve gravitated back to some of the two-tight end sets where they want to establish the run.

“And most of their big plays in the passing game with No. 6 tend to be the throw underneath, and catch and run. He’s exciting and explosive with the ball in his hand, and he’s a guy that we’ve got to do a good job of trying to contain.”

Maryland has attempted the second-most pass attempts out of any Big Ten team this season, and is third in yards through the air per contest (319.5). A pass-heavy attack will have to be on high alert for Michigan’s edge defenders — junior Aidan Hutchinson and redshirt freshman David Ojabo — who each have 10 sacks on the year.

“Defensively, Aidan Hutchinson is as advertised and will be probably one of the biggest defensive playmakers that we’ve faced this year — a mixture of size, speed, tenacity,” Locksley explained. “Really, really plays hard, with a motor. On the other side of him, No. 55 [Ojabo], I think both of those guys have 10 sacks apiece.”

For Michigan, Saturday’s tilt has all the makings of a classic ‘trap game,’ with a showdown against arch-rival No. 4 Ohio State looming Nov. 27. If both the Wolverines and Buckeyes, who host Michigan State this weekend, win Saturday, the two rivals will play for the Big Ten East title.

Without saying it explicitly, Locksley implied that he’s hoping Michigan has a bit of a letdown in a game sandwiched between an emotional win at Penn State and the rivalry contest against Ohio State.

“They’ve done a great job of not beating themselves and putting themselves in the position where they’re competing for a Big Ten title, which I think it’ll come down to their game behind our game,” the Terrapins’ head man said. “They play Ohio State a week after us, and not to put that in their head, but I think they’ve got a big game coming up. So hopefully, we can do the things we need to do to send our players here at home out a winner at home.”