Maryland quarterback Josh Jackson is not taking anything for granted, not even the starting job
After a disappointing first season, the former Virginia Tech transfer is hoping that his health and familiarity with Mike Locksley's system will lead to much better results
(Photo courtesy of Maryland athletics)
A year ago at this time, Josh Jackson had just graduated from Virginia Tech and was getting ready to join the Maryland football team as its presumptive starting quarterback. As excited as Jackson was to begin his junior year after missing most of the previous season in Blacksburg with a broken leg, fans in College Park seemed even more thrilled to have him.
Jackson will return to Maryland for his redshirt senior year next week, but a lot has changed. After a fast start that included Jackson throwing for seven touchdowns in the team’s first two games - one-sided victories over Howard (79-0) and No. 21 Syracuse (63-20) - Jackson struggled in a season that was interrupted for four games by a badly sprained ankle.
Whenever the Terps return to the practice field - for now all of the time will be spent on conditioning and weight training in small groups - Jackson’s status is dramatically different. The starting job is up for grabs, likely between Jackson and redshirt freshman Lance LeGendre unless Alabama transfer Taulia Tagovailoa secures an eligibility waiver from the NCAA.
Jackson, who hasn’t been a backup going into a season since he changed high schools in Michigan as a junior and quickly won the job, is looking forward to changing the narrative of a career that began so promisingly at Virginia Tech, where he led the Hokies to a 9-4 record in 2017 and was among the top freshman quarterbacks in the country.
A year after narrowly beating out Tyrrell Pigrome as Maryland’s starter last summer, Jackson knows the job won’t be handed to him this time just because Pigrome has transferred to Western Kentucky, Tyler DeSue has stopped playing and LeGendre, a former four-star prospect, is largely inexperienced, having appeared in three games as a true freshman before getting hurt himself.
“Locks made it clear to me that I didn’t play well enough to think that I don’t have to compete for my job or that it’s my job to lose,” Jackson said in the first interview he has given since Maryland’s 2019 season ended with a 19-16 loss at Michigan State and a 3-9 record under first-year coach Mike Locksley.
“He made it clear that he would go get guys (other quarterbacks). Obviously he got ‘Lia (Tagovailoa). When we’re in camp, hopefully we’re having one, hopefully I earn my job back. I think I’ve had to earn my starting spot every time I’ve been a starter. It’s all about making each other better and the best guy wins.”
It wasn’t clear what exactly happened to Jackson after the first two games last season.
Starting with a 20-17 loss to Temple in Philadelphia when he was intercepted on the opening series and badly overthrew tight end Chig Okonkwo in the end zone on Maryland’s last possession, Jackson played “horribly” both against the Owls and in the next game against Penn State, a 59-0 loss which began with two early interceptions that led to touchdowns for the Nittany Lions.
Jackson missed three games after being injured against Rutgers - the only other win for the Terps last season - and after playing one series at Minnesota, completed just 28 of 68 passes (41.2 %) for 306 yards in Maryland’s last four games. For the season, Jackson completed 47.3 % of his passes, which ranked next to last among 110 FBS quarterbacks with enough throws to qualify.
Asked what happened after the first two games, Jackson said, “I can’t tell exactly. If I had more time to work with the coaches and had more time to prepare in this offense and not jumped right into it in the summer, that might have helped. … Things kind of went downhill after those first two games, everyone knows that. The goal now is not to let that happen again.”
(Photo courtesy of Maryland athletics)
There were some who wondered whether Jackson would even return for his redshirt senior year, given how banged up he appeared to be finishing the season and how poorly he had played for most of the season. Jackson said he had no thought of quitting football - something DeSue did in the off-season - or transferring again.
“Obviously I didn’t play well enough to leave, so you come back and play another year,” he said half-jokingly.
There were also those who questioned whether Jackson’s laid-back attitude - as I wrote about before his debut in a story on his superstition to watch “The Lion King” before each season opener - had worn thin with Locksley, who out of frustration once said that his quarterback was a “little too much Hakuna Matata” for his liking.
“Eventually I’ve understood that he’s more the opposite of Hakuna Matata, he’s an intense guy and I try to be as calm as I can be,” Jackson said. ”Absolutely, I’ve been trying to ramp that up more. Just got to do what your head coach wants you to do, right? Just maybe coming out of that to help him and help the team I think may be important.”
Jackson said he knows that Maryland fans vented their own frustration with another losing season through his performance after he was hyped as the most accomplished quarterback to lead the Terps since Scott McBrien in the early 2000s. He stayed off the various message boards and didn’t pay attention to social media.
The comparisons to McBrien were the result of Jackson’s breakout performance as a redshirt freshman at Virginia Tech, when he won the starting job in preseason camp and went on to complete 59.6 percent of his passes for 2,991 yards and 20 touchdowns, the second-most among freshmen behind Georgia’s Jake Fromm.
If Maryland fans are hoping for LeGendre to take over - or better yet, for Tagovailoa to get an NCAA waiver to play immediately in 2020 - Jackson is blissfully ignorant of that prevailing attitude.
“I haven’t looked at message boards since my redshirt freshman year at Virginia Tech,” he said. “I admit that happened to me at Virginia Tech, I got into that. It affected me. I was 19, 20 years old. Now when I get DMs, and all that hate mail and everything like that from people on Twitter with 17 followers, honestly you just laugh at it. It doesn’t affect you at all. “
Locksley told me recently that he believes Jackson, as well as LeGendre, should benefit from having a full season in the system he brought to Maryland from Alabama. Jackson agrees, and also thinks that by the time the season begins he will be two years removed from the injury that ended his redshirt sophomore year at Virginia Tech after three games.
Jackson has spent the last two months during the pandemic at home in Ann Arbor, continuing to work on his master’s in psychology and working out in the basement of his family’s home as well as at his old high school mostly with older brother Jeremy, a former Michigan wide receiver.
He compared the year he spent at Maryland to when he was a true freshman at Virginia Tech.
“Off -season wise, I’m definitely in a lot better shape,” Jackson said. “Last off-season I was coming off a broken leg and I was also not with the team. So adjusting to that, trying to stay in shape while trying to finish 15 credits and trying to graduate, it was tough. So I didn’t come in in the best shape coming into Maryland.”
Jackson also gets a different sense among his teammates too.
“I would say the energy and vibe and discipline we were coming into this year with was a lot different, and a lot better,” Jackson said. “As we really started to buy in and what is going on here, I think the guys that weren’t bought in left and the guys that have bought in are ready to turn this thing around.”
Like the rest of us, Jackson doesn’t know exactly when the season will begin and what precautions will be put in place to keep those involved safe.
“I would love to have a season, but I wouldn’t want to risk having my parents at the game, my dad turning 70 in a couple of weeks. I don’t think he’ll be watching this season other than from home,” Jackson said. “Everybody thinks it’s 11 on 11, but during a game there’s at least 150 to 200 people on the field, and not all those men and women are between 18 and 22. There’s some older people, some older coaches. You’ve got to make sure it’s safe.”
Jackson said he doesn’t feel any added pressure or responsibility for helping build on the progress Locksley is making retooling his team’s roster in recruiting. The Terps are now ranked 11th in the country and fifth in the Big Ten with the commitment Wednesday from Tommy Akingbesote, the fourth 4-star defensive player in the class of 2021.
“The responsibility of a quarterback is to go out and win games,” Jackson said. “When you win games, that helps out with recruiting, that’s just how it works. I’ve never necessarily thought about it like that. I hope that’s not selfish of me…I’m thinking about defenses and plays and things like that.”