What did Maryland coach Mike Locksley say about Penn State, and his QB situation, on Tuesday?

Maryland coach Mike Locksley and his team will board a bus in College Park on Friday to head to State College. On Saturday, the 4-7 Terrapins will close out their 2024 season when they meet Penn State (10-1) at 3:30 p.m. ET on Big Ten Network. On Tuesday, the sixth-year leader of the program held his first news conference of game week. His first Penn State themed question was about his relationship wth James Franklin. The pair were on the Terps staff together for a number of years.

“Obviously, I go way back with James, very familiar with him as a person, and always enjoy competing against him and his team,” Locksley said, according to Inside The Black and Gold. “Everyone in our building has a lot of respect for their team, a lot of strong relationships, obviously, from guys playing against each other, working together. They’re extremely balanced in what they do. Good defense. Tom Allen, the former head coach, is over there, taking over from Manny [Diaz]. They’ve done a good job. They’ve been number two in scoring defense, top five in scoring offense, and really impressed with the way they finished a couple of games this year.

“You look back and see the USC game and then you see the game against Minnesota, they’ve played and some really been battle tested, and some really tough, close games. And for us, you know, what? What a great way to finish our ‘24 season is to go up there and compete against a playoff caliber team to really kind of see where we measure up. I expect our guys to compete. We tend to play up, which I hate, and that’s one of the consistencies that we got to get fixed. But I expect us to.”

What else did Locksley say about Penn State?

Much of the news conference focused on Maryland’s issues rather than this weekend’s opponent. One thing that continues to be unclear is who the Terrapins will start at quarterback. Billy Edwards Jr. has been the main man under center. But, he is dealing with injuries. If he cannot play, MJ Morris will. But, no decision has been made yet.

“He practiced [Monday],” Locksley said. “Yesterday, it was more of a walk-through practice for us as it was planned that way. He’s still a little bit banged up. But you know what I’ve seen, Billy’s been banged up all year, and I very rarely talk injuries – had back surgery back in May, a couple of things didn’t get cleared till July, really, he fought through all year with some of these things, and I expect him to fight through, to try to make himself available this weekend, to be done. And obviously, MJ will be prepared to take over and lead us into the game if Billy can’t go.”

Here’s what else Locksley had to say about the matchup according to the transcript posted by InsideTheBlackandGold.net.

On facing the Lions’ rushing offense

“The Big Ten, big backs, heavy-handed, running,” Locksley said. “They both – both those guys have finishing speed. They run with power, size, and then you throw [Tyler Warren]. That’s one of the things when you look at them, 44 is a guy they put in there for the Wildcat quarterback slash and he’s taken some of those carries away from those guys, and he’s just as talented. So you look at three heavy-handed finishers this time of year in the Big Ten.

“Obviously, we expect them to try to run the ball. They’re very balanced in what they do and they don’t put themselves in harm’s way a lot. They have a unique scheme and do a lot of exotic formations that create leverage in numbers at times. And so we’ve got to just be really clean in our alignments and with our eyes, but really good scheme. Guy from Kansas coming up, and you just can see that they put stress on defenses through exotic formations and how they line up.”

On dealing with the Penn State defense

“[They’re] really talented at all three levels, right? I think they hit home runs in the portal with some of the corners they got,” Locksley said. “They got really good safeties, the linebackers, and then obviously the front seven of their team is a strength, and it has been for a while. And you know, with Tom taking over for Manny as the D coordinator, you can just see like he put his personality on it with some of the same concepts, and they do a great job on the defensive end.

“For us, it’s going to be important that we find ways to create some manufacturing explosive plays, which has been the missing piece of our offense here the last three, four weeks is just our inability to create the explosives that that we had going on earlier in the year.”