Everything Maryland HC Mike Locksley Said About Michigan Football

The Maryland coach talked about preparing for Michigan, how a win would impact the program, and of course -- sign stealing.

Michigan will hit the road and head to College Park to take on Maryland on Saturday. The Wolverines are set to play at noon on Fox. 

Michigan is 10-1 against Maryland all-time and the Wolverines have won the past two contests. Last season, in Ann Arbor, Michigan defeated the Terps 34-27. 

Maryland got off to a strong start to the season winning its first five games. But the Terrapins lost the next four games, including games to Illinois and Northwestern, before finally winning a game last weekend against Nebraska. 

On Tuesday, during his press conference, head coach Mike Locksley talked about Michigan. He talked about how his team is preparing for the Wolverines, on the sign-stealing allegations at Michigan, and much more. 

Here's everything Locksley said about the Wolverines on Tuesday. 

On the preparation to play Michigan:

Obviously, this is a tremendous opportunity for our program. A top-five team coming in here, reigning champion of the Big Ten. Extremely talented team. The last two days, I had an opportunity to watch all three phases and they’re one of those teams that it isn’t one player, that kind of, the marquee guy. They’ve got a bunch of really good players that seem to play well together and that’s what jumps out on the tape. I got a lot of respect for them. Obviously, they’re going through some of their own issues, and for 18-to-22-year-olds to be able to kind of compartmentalize and stay focused on the task at hand, which they were able to do last week up in State College which is a tough place to play and win shows the type of team that they’ve developed over there. We need to go into this game with confidence. Any time you win, it helps your confidence. I think our team is excited about this opportunity. I mean very few times in your career do you get to have what I call a breakthrough type of game and you know, what a breakthrough this would be for our program. For us to put it all together this week. Show up Saturday and execute and play a damn near-perfect game. Our players don’t have to play above their ability to win this game. We just have to play to our ability and I feel confident that we’ll get our guys prepared to do that come Saturday.

How to focus on Michigan and avoid any outside noise:

18-to-22-year-olds are going to do what they do. They live in the information world. But as we’ve learned around here, none of that has anything to do with us. It’s not any of our business what’s going on up at Michigan. We need to really focus on the things that we can control and the things that we have to do. And I mean, our standard is to again, worry about the Terps and make sure that we put the best version of the Terps out on the field, executing the things we need to get executed. What’s going on up in Ann Arbor has nothing to do with us.

On the senior's last home game:

It’s always the emotional, the last home game, last opportunity for a bunch of guys that have been through a lot during their time here. And again, as I told them, what a great opportunity to end your career here in the shale against reigning champion, Big Ten champion, top-five team, top-four team. What a great, great opportunity and a great story to tell your kids down the road as we can put it all together. There’s no doubt that this group is deserving of this opportunity. I’m excited to see them go out and play to their ability this Saturday.

On preparing for Michigan's defense:

Kris Jenkins Jr. is a star in the making and he’s one of those guys in our league that when you put the tape on, he flashes. They’ve got a good corner, the Johnson kid. Really talented players, two talented linebackers. But you look across the board and this team plays really well together. Like it’s not one shining star that kind of sets them apart. I mean, they are a well-oiled machine, especially on the defensive side of the ball. They play really sound. They don’t make a lot of mistakes meaning you are going to have to execute at a really high level. And for me, that’s kind of been our Achilles heel is the lack of execution, especially in critical times. And so for us, we haven’t had that one game yet where I felt like we put all three phases together, we all played that perfect game and what would be a better opportunity to do that than to do it against a team like Michigan here at home.

On if Maryland changed signals before playing Michigan and how difficult it is to learn new signals:

Once we heard that two, three weeks ago, we made a lot of the necessary adjustments because if one has them, as you read and hear, anybody can have them and so we’ve taken necessary precautions to just make sure that again, what we can control. On offense, defense, we’ve definitely mixed up our communications and how we’re able to do it and so we don’t feel like that will have any effect on our game.

It is what it is and playing Michigan is a difficult process, but it’s on the schedule and we play them. So we do the work whatever’s necessary to give us a chance to compete. So we got it done.

On Michigan running the ball 32 consecutive times against Penn State:

Every game when your game plan, you’ve got to decide what you need to do to win the game and obviously that’s what they felt they had to do a week ago to win. How are they going to attack us? We need to figure that out. I know that they have the ability to attack you in a number of ways. They’ve got a Heisman Trophy candidate at quarterback, really talented skill. They’ve got a reigning two-time Joe Moore [offensive] line, offensive line two straight years so really talented. And so to have the ability to do both really well, that’s kind of what we’ve worked towards to try to get our offense to be like, but we got to be prepared for the run. We got to be able to stop the pass. We don’t know how they’re going to attack us but we’ll find out Saturday at noon and we got to be prepared to make the necessary adjustments and do the things we can to kind of make them one-dimensional.

On the impact a win against Michigan would have:

The past has nothing to do with what happens on Saturday. The last four games have no bearing on Saturday, and we all need to realize that. Every game is its own entity. Now at the end of the year, you can kind of go back and talk about the season as a whole but for us, this is a one-game season against a really talented team. We know that they’re talented, but I can tell you we’re talented too. We don’t always play smart and that’s my job to get us to play better and to play smarter, to be more efficient and execute at a higher level. Which we’re gonna put the work in this week and you know what? We’ll see how it unfolds on Saturday.