It’s one thing for a Big Ten Conference team to beat a Group of Five or FCS school by 50 or more points. But when a Big Ten team loses by 50 or more points, it might be time to call it a wrap.
That’s the situation that Maryland’s embattled head coach Mike Locksley finds himself in after his Terrapins football team lost at home 54-3 against UCLA today.
The Maryland mustered only 181 yards, committed four turnovers and didn’t have a single play of 20 yards or more. The defense was equally bad, giving up 475 yards of offense including 266 rushing yards.
Speaking to the media after the game, Locksley looked defeated at the podium but expressed confidence that he can still fix the issues with the team. More importantly, he expects to still be the team’s head coach on Monday when he has his weekly meeting with the athletic director.
“I still have a lot of confidence in myself and the staff to get this thing fixed. That will have to be earned… I’m going to have to earn it. I’m not going to able to claim it up here,” he said, via ESPN’s Adam Rittenberg.
A Tough Sell
Even if Locksley does make it to Monday, he’s going to have a tough time convincing anyone, let alone his bosses, that he has much of a future at Maryland. His three straight winning seasons seem like a distant memory as the team is coming off back-to-back losing seasons and is just 2-17 in the Big Ten since 2024.
Overall, Locksley is 39-51 with a 17-49 conference record.
Fans seem to agree that it’s time for him to go:
“‘I’m going to have to earn it’ – Mike Locksley in his 8th year at Maryland. WTF are we doing Terps?” one user remarked.
“Brian Kelly will be looking at homes in College Park in October,” another predicted.
“Typically, if you’ve been the head coach of a program for eight years, it means that at some point you were pretty good. I don’t think this guy was ever good,” a third wrote.
© Tommy Gilligan-Imagn Images
It’s still only September and there may be time to turn things around, but a loss like that is pretty hard to live down. We haven’t seen a head coach fired yet but Locksley seems like a prime candidate to be the first.
Has Locksley coached his final game for Maryland?
