Maryland head coach Michael Locksley believes college football teams make their biggest improvement between Week 1 and Week 2 of the season. Game results provide the kind of answers and data points that practices and scrimmages simply can't. Teams evolve during a season, of course, but those first 60 minutes set an important foundation.
"You never know who you are until you play a game," Locksley said Sept. 3. "You can scrimmage all day long, and the familiarity that goes along with scrimmaging makes it really difficult because your defense knows your weaknesses, they know what your fleas and Achilles' heels are, and they can exploit those things. Whereas when you play your first game, you can really find out, 'Are we who we think we are?' And then you make the adjustments off of those answers."
The Terps probably won't be able to improve on the result from last week -- a 79-0 win against Howard in which they led 623-68 in total yardage -- but Locksley maintains there is room for improvement in several areas. He said the Terps' offense made some mistakes trying to be too up-tempo, while the safeties can better communicate to set up the defense.
"The scoreboard to us, we try not to let that even come into play when we game plan, when we correct from games when we win or when we lose," Locksley said. "The key thing is to go in and get the corrections made for the fundamental mistakes or the mental errors that took place."
