Maryland football’s QB competition is over, but Mike Locksley isn’t revealing the starter

COLLEGE PARK — Mike Locksley, the coaches and the players associated with Maryland football know who will start at quarterback for the team’s season opener against UConn on Saturday at noon. And that’s all Locksley was willing to divulge Tuesday during his weekly media availability at SECU Stadium.

“It gives us no competitive advantage to name [him] publicly,” he said, adding that he informed Cameron Edge, Billy Edwards Jr. and MJ Morris of his decision Sunday night. “They know who it is. We’re preparing the way we typically prepare where our starter gets a lion’s share of the reps, and we get the No. 2 guy ready. And the third guy gets a lot of visual reps and is up. There’s no doubt in my mind I can win with all three.”

It is a familiar refrain Locksley has repeated since the Terps spring game April 27. But Locksley emphasized that his secrecy is not an indication of any ambivalence regarding his decision.

“There’s no uncertainty at quarterback,” he said last week. “We’ve got a quarterback in our program. We’ve got a few quarterbacks in our program that we think can play winning football. If anything has come out of this when you ask how the quarterbacks are doing, I have a room that can play winning football.”

CBS Sports Network college football analyst Cardale Jones speculated that Locksley had an idea who the quarterback was as early as last week.

“One guy has to get more reps than the other guy to get him ready for this season,” the former Ohio State quarterback said. “I do think it gives you as a quarterback a sense of calm and a sense of readiness. You’re thinking, ‘OK, let me get my team ready,’ versus, ‘Let me continue to compete for a job.’ I think once you get that quarterback in that mindset earlier, the better because now he’s getting those extra reps and much-needed reps to catch up to speed.”

Try as Locksley did to suggest that Edge, a 6-foot, 225-pound redshirt sophomore, was part of the equation, conventional wisdom seems to center on Edwards, a redshirt junior, and Morris, a redshirt sophomore, jockeying for the right to walk out with the first offense. At Tuesday’s practice, Edwards took the first snaps with the offense during drills.

Edwards is the incumbent. Last year’s backup to starter Taulia Tagovailoa, the 6-3, 222-pound Edwards accounted for a combined 176 yards and two touchdowns, including his team-high seventh rushing score, in place of Tagovailoa in the Terps’ 31-13 victory over Auburn in the Music City Bowl in Nashville, Tennessee, on Dec. 30.

The 6-1, 209-pound Morris might have a higher ceiling. The North Carolina State transfer totaled 719 passing yards and seven touchdowns during a four-game span from Oct. 7 to Nov. 6 in which the Wolfpack went 3-1.

Whoever lines up under center against the Huskies, Locksley — who doubles as the team’s quarterbacks coach — acknowledged that the other quarterbacks must continue to grow. He cited starting Tua Tagovailoa at Alabama, but working to develop Jalen Hurts so that he was ready to relieve an injured Tagovailoa in a 35-28 win against Georgia in the Southeastern Conference championship game in 2018.

But Locksley said he does not plan to rotate quarterbacks.

“Once we name a guy, it’s his job,” he said last week. “There won’t be a guy looking over his shoulder, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see us continue to develop some guys that we feel make our team better.”

Jones noted that Saturday’s starter will have the unenviable task of succeeding Tagovailoa, who became the Big Ten’s all-time leader in passing yards (11,256) and the program’s career leader in passing yards, touchdown passes (76), total touchdowns (89), completion percentage (.671) and 300-yard passing games (15).

“If you look at them historically, they have been a big-play offense mainly because of Tagovailoa,” Jones said. “He was able to make those off-platform throws, those off-schedule plays, those plays outside of the pocket. So I’m not expecting a lot of that this year with them having a new quarterback and not as many playmakers, but I’m anxious to see what this offense is going to look like.”

Jones said Maryland’s coaches can help the quarterback by leaning on a rushing attack headlined by redshirt junior Roman Hemby, senior Colby McDonald and redshirt freshman Nolan Ray. Hemby, an Edgewood native and John Carroll graduate, said he has confidence in whoever starts at quarterback but is ready to alleviate some of the pressure.

“I think it’s a big job for us as running backs,” he said. “I know that for myself and the rest of the room, we take a lot of pride in pass protection and just making downs manageable. We talk about first and second downs, and if we can make it third-and-short, that will make everybody else’s job easier, especially the quarterback position. So we go out there every day, and we want to do our job as best as we can to help everybody else out.”

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Hemby said the quarterback competition was an example of how “iron sharpens iron.” Locksley said he expects Hemby and his teammates to support the quarterback.

“Our team is going to get behind the starter and rally behind that guy,” he said. “The guy doesn’t have to win the game for us. What we’ve got to do is, play to the standard, practice and prepare to our standard, and I feel good about the quarterback room as a whole.”

That sentiment was shared by senior wide receiver Tai Felton.

“That’s our motto this year: just do your job,” he said. “We’re comfortable with anybody that’s back there — whether it’s Billy or MJ or Cam. We’re comfortable with all three of those guys. So we’ll be ready when Saturday comes.”