Everything Mike Locksley said at on-campus media day presser

Read everything Maryland head coach Mike Locksley had to say during his on-campus media day press conference below.

Opening statement

As always, really appreciative of the coverage that we receive from you guys daily and you know our players are excited about getting back started today. It’s great to be back as we head into practice number one later today. I know that you know our message has been simple as we entered into our team meeting yesterday, anything and everything that took place a year ago, we’ve ripped off the rearview mirror and it’s moving forward only.

I’m really confident that we have this strong foundation. You hear me talk a lot about the foundation and I’ve said it before, we’ve had the resources to build the foundation and what we want to do now is take the next step, which is to elevate. And the reason that I feel feel good about the foundation is when you have a strong foundation that allows you to bounce back and to me that’s the key for this group of young, hungry, talented players as well as a veteran group of players that knows what it takes to get this program back where we all want it to be. I love the makeup of our coaching staff. I know I had the media out to my house a couple days ago and you guys got a chance to hear firsthand from the experience, from the mentality of what this coaching staff brings. They bring a tremendous amount of energy, a tremendous amount of detail and from a development standpoint I’ve already seen the fruits of having some of the coaches that we’ve brought in about how the guys work the seeds this this summer.

There’s a real excitement in our building. There’s obviously been a lot of change within our athletic department. I know my boss Jim Smith is here today and as I’ve said before there’s a tremendous amount of alignment and there’s a newness with the energy of bringing in and having the type of change that we’ve had. I can’t wait to get out there today, I really can’t. To see just it’s kind of like Christmas in August as I usually call it. I know it’s July 30th so you guys will say that I’m a little early but it’s Christmas time for us as football coaches because we get to find out just what kind of team we have and then we get to start building the culture that will need to get us through a really tough season but with that said it’s time to go to work and I’ll open up for whatever questions you guys have.

On avoiding the pitfalls of last season

Well, I think the big thing is lessons you get from and it’s from winning and failing and you know, sometimes when you say things, I mean you guys hear the part you want to hear but I think what shouldn’t be lost is that as I said, the rearview mirror has been ripped off now for us. It’s what I said a week ago. Our team reported yesterday and what I’ll tell you is that we have a foundation that we’ve built over the last six seasons and this is year seven for me. And with this type of foundation we have, the bounce back for me is the part that we’re focused our energies on moving forward. I think our players understand, I think we understand as the landscape has continued to evolve that we just have to be ready to pivot and you know if I were to take a lesson from it, it’s kind of like I always talk to you guys about being a parent. As a parent, to be a good parent you have to anticipate things.

I didn’t anticipate it and that’s the part that hopefully you heard. But now that I know about it as I’ve said before, we’ve done things and we’ve put people in positions to where I don’t feel like we’ll have to deal with those types of issues.

On who will start at quarterback

Yeah, as we’ve done this dance before, Gene, you and I, we will know who our quarterback is on Sunday before we start preparation for game one. We will know.

You will know when we walk out and the guy that takes the first snap. Because there’s a lot of things that come into play. And I can tell you that to stand up here and say that I know who the guy is, I know I got a room of really talented quarterbacks, the three that really shine for me, Justyn Martin, Khristian Martin, and Malik Washington, all similar skill sets, all similar builds. We only need one genre of offense with this group because they’re all very similar. And I’m really excited about looking forward to the competition that I’m about to see here in the next 25 days.

On all the change in college football

Probably a lot like you, Sam, going from a student reporter to now, Baltimore Sun, right? First year, man, let’s go. How are you handling it, right? Well, I grew up in change. I grew up in the south side of DC, and change was every single day for me. So I have lived in that wheelhouse. It’s something that I’m used to. Maybe some people around here aren’t. Maybe you guys aren’t. But I know a lot of the type of guys that I recruit tend to be similar to me in personality. We embrace it. I’m excited about change.

Change is a good thing, especially when you have wisdom and you bring in people that understand what we want to get accomplished. There’s a tremendous amount of alignment, and that gives me comfort.

On taking a more pro-style approach

You’re a pro now. You’re working for the Baltimore Sun. When you walk in, you’re discussing your salary with your counterparts? Probably not.

So those are the life lessons that I have to start teaching that I didn’t have to teach a year ago, that I didn’t anticipate teaching. Imagine an 18-year-old whose scholarship has been the same as everybody else’s for the last 100 years. And now all of a sudden there’s a difference in those scholarship checks. Those are the things as a parent I should have and needed to anticipate. But what I’ll say is this is the new landscape.

When you start paying people, they become pros. You’re a pro. My players are pros because they are being paid. The difference is I have a moral compass. I know my boss has the same moral compass that we’re in the business of educating while teaching them how to be pros is the first step for us. And handling that part is easy for me because I didn’t get to be a pro. And because of the degree I’ve earned, I’m able to be and do the things that I do. And there’s the moral compass that we have as coaches, as teachers, as administrators that yeah, they’re pros in their respective sport. But we still have some development to do as people. And that’s where my energy and the things and the experiences I have, I have to lead from the front with those things.

On the experience the three new coordinators bring

Yeah, I think the big thing when you bring in the experience that we brought in, I learned under Coach Saban that it’s really important that even though you bring new people in, what we do is steal Maryland’s intellectual property. We’re running Maryland’s offense, Maryland’s defense, Maryland’s special teams. And those guys, much like I was able to do when I came in as a coordinator, are able to put their personalities on what we do.

And I think if you’ve studied those three and you look at what Pep has done in his time at Stanford, his time at Michigan, and I said this before, if you were to just take his picture and name off the resume and you put it in front of executives that hire head coaches, you’d have a hard time not hiring Pep Hamilton. And I think the other side of it is the Ted Monachino and his experience at the NFL level in a system that is very complimentary to what we’ve done, the genre of defense we’ve played, but maybe some added value that he brings in because of the experience. And he’s got a young group of outside backers. If there’s been an Achilles heel for us on defense, it’s being able to generate pass rush without adding people. But then the biggest hire for me, and not that it’s more important than the other two, but for me, being able to hire a full-time special teams coordinator with the experience and pedigree of Andre Powell, And Dre and I have worked together before. I’ve competed against him. His experience, we have too. Because of the type of athletes, the type of players we have in our program, I have an expectation that we should play special teams better. And I expect Dre, with his experience, we’ve added Chilly Davis to the mix with him, another full-time guy that’s all their energies are on special teams. And as we’ve seen, special teams generate a tremendous amount of momentum in games. And with those two and their experience, you put those three together, I think, as you’ll see, as we progress through camp, that experience have allowed us to elevate.

The impact new AD Jim Smith has had on the program

You know, I’d love to hire. Obviously, those type of things happen above my pay grade, but I got a lot of respect for the work that Jim has done.

You look at his pedigree. He knows what championship level looks like. He’s won major league baseball championships. He’s been a part of Ohio State, which probably has been one of the blue bloods in college athletics a long time, and much like myself, having the opportunities to work under people like Nick Saban to get a chance to work under an administrator that has built pro models, because we’re in an area where we need to maybe think outside of the box. And I know from the conversations and the communication that we have, which is pretty much on a daily basis, there’s a tremendous amount of alignment that this area could be a very fruitful area in real NIL. And we’ve got a guy that understands that market, and I’m looking forward to working with him to create the value that allows us to keep these top players right here at home.

On having unknown commodities at key positions

Yeah, and that’s the part, you know, I like to speak in code and I try to message in code and when I talk about being excited about the unknown, we have a lot of people that people haven’t scouted, didn’t scout, can’t scout and they’re going to mess around and find out per se because we have recruited really well. They’re young and we’ve played young.

You know, I heard how Hunter describe how in his 30 years of NFL coaching, he’s always coached a rookie tackle, a rookie guard. And so to me, that’s where, when I talk about being excited about the unknown is because we inside the Jones Hill House building understand that we have some talented players. We’ve seen them all summer, we’ve seen their development, their growth. We’ve added pieces to the puzzle for this year, that again, when you start paying people, that we expect results now and we’re trying to expedite their growth and the type of coaches that we’ve hired and the systems we’ve put in, I think will allow us to play some of these young players and allow them to grow. There’ll be adversity, there’ll be failures, they’ll make mistakes. But what I’ve learned is that the really talented players, they don’t make it often and they don’t make them a second or third time. And so the unknown is a good thing for us going into this season and because the story isn’t written other than what you guys think.

On wide receivers Octavian Smith and Jalil Farooq

You know, and that’s the landscape. You got a guy that’s been developed like Octavian Smith and then you’ve got a new guy that I’ve had a strong relationship with, have known since he was a eighth, ninth grader playing running back for the Bowie youth football program in Jalil Farooq. That’s where we are. And that’s the part that’s exciting for me because I always say the portal giveth and it taketh. And you know we were able to bring in a guy like Jalil Farooq and his production, he’s a guy that’s produced, you know three straight years there at Oklahoma. Talented player that we know a lot about.

And then you have a guy like Octavian Smith, who was a quarterback in high school. Most people recruited as a corner and we see him develop into where he’s one of those guys that’s leading that receiver room and a guy that’s made plays from the time he stepped on campus and to me that’s kind of how the the sweet recipe for how Maryland needs to be, where we build it with the foundation of these local high school players and we’ve done that the last couple of years with a couple top 25 classes and then you add value through free agency, the portal, whatever you want to call it, by bringing in guys like Jalil Farooq. Let’s see the value of what Maryland has been able to do in terms of putting players and developing players for the next level.

On what quarterback Justyn Martin brings to the team

Yeah, I think the biggest thing with Justyn, you know, is his experience, even though it’s not a full resume just yet. The fact that he’s taken a snap under center, he’s the only guy in that room right now that has done that.

And because of that, as I oftentimes talk about from a quarterback or from any type of player development, you got to fill the toolbox up and he’s a guy that has seen some of the defenses in this conference a year ago. A super talented guy, was a highly, highly recruited guy out of high school, so not new to being under the lights, per se. But I also see a ton of humility out of the guy in that, you know, some new guys come in and they come in with some of the baggage or some of the attitude of, hey, I’m here and he really has worked hard to kind of work himself into our team and into our family concept in every part of it, you know, socially. I look up on Sundays and he’s at church sitting right next to me at church and walking up afterwards and I didn’t know he was there. But he’s been that kind of a get for us. He’s been really good in the quarterback room, even though there is a competition, those guys are really, really close and it starts because of the relationship with Pep who spent a lot of time dealing with those type of quarterbacks. So I think Justin’s experience is a plus for us. I think the fact that he’s an older player that kind of has been under the microscope, which play in that position here, tends to do for you. And I think he’s prepared to compete to do that.

On players transferring in-conference

Yeah, I mean it’s it’s what happens at the level above us they play against their former teams. They have their motivations there, well, so do we. We take pride in the name on the front of our jersey that, you know, I’d be lying if I didn’t tell you that when guys leave here that I block them. I don’t follow them. I’m kind of petty with that, but it’s just how I operate.

It’ll be interesting to play against former players. I’ve done that before, it’s not a first time. But it’s the landscape, you do things systems wise. It’s why you’ll see us huddle a little bit more because we’ve been a no huddle team that uses a bunch of signals that now all of a sudden you got guys spread all over the conference that know things. So anticipating like a good parent should do, we’ll mix and match our tempos. But you know every year is a new team. I think we’re not the only ones dealing with it so other teams will have new players as well that we’ve got to figure out and that they’ll have to compete against some of their former players. And I think it makes the game more fun. It gives us a little competitiveness that maybe wasn’t there.

On revenue sharing and how it might affect roster construction

You know, I don’t know if you’ve heard, but yeah, that we limped to the finish line waiting for revenue share. As I code, you know, I told you I’m talking in code, a year ago I said revenue share is a good thing for Maryland because it closes the gap between what we had a year ago to what we’ll have moving forward. And to me That’s a that’s a good thing because I think if you look at the way we’ve recruited the way we evaluate the system that we have in place for acquiring players, having the resources to do it, you know, I’d be lying if I didn’t tell you we lost players because maybe we didn’t have enough. But what we’ve done and what again, instead of sitting around crying about what we didn’t have we’ve chosen to say, ‘hey, let’s focus on the high school recruit. Let’s get some of these talented players that are now maybe being overlooked based on people going to the portal and that was kind of our wheelhouse and our space that we lived in for the last two, three years. And It’s been really fruitful when you look up and you see guys like Jaylen Gilchrist, Malik Washington, Zahir Mathis, Zymear Smith and really talented high school players that will be thrown to the deep end of the pool per se and kind of teach them fast.

On freshman quarterback Malik Washington

I think the biggest thing with any position and not just the quarterback position is just what you said, making the strides. And typically the way you make strides is by failing and so we’ve got to put guys like Malik in positions and practice. You know It’s almost like you reading here about Tiger Woods how he throws the ball into the the sand trap and deliberately practicing one of the toughest shots there is. Well, we’ve got to create that environment and practice the next 25 days for all these young guys so that we can maybe get some of the failure, we can build some of the experiences that that they will be able to lean back on. That’s been a great benefit for us having a guy like Malik here early, is that we went through a spring with them, having some of these really talented high school guys.

We’ve been able to get them some of the experience that hopefully will allow them, when they do make mistakes, to to bounce back from them a lot quicker.

On having multiple offensive line coaches

Yeah, it’s paid off well. And it was a suggestion Pep made to me about five years ago. Pep and I have always been really close.

And when I study what the NFL had done, and you look at they’ve got two and three line coaches. And in college, we hadn’t gotten to that point. And when we were able now to hire analysts that can coach and do some other things, it allowed us to have guys like Brian Ferentz here to help with the development of some of these young linemen that a year ago, you didn’t get a chance to see. But unlike being on a scout team, reading a card from a guy that’s showing you, we had a guy over there coaching those guys every single day on the scout team about the fundamentals of those positions. And that’s kind of what, when you look at the way staffs are built, to win in a Big Ten, there’s no doubt you have to be really good up front. You have to be able to run the ball. You have to be able to stop the run. And everybody knows we can throw the ball. And we know how to create explosives. But to line up in third and one, fourth and one, get tough yards, be a tough team, that’s where adding guys like Hal Hunter, who worked closely with Robo, and bringing Pep on board with his Battle of Gettysburg mentality of putting a bunch of people in there, and let’s just be a little physical, and I think that’s the type of camp you’ll see us have as we try to build our program to compete in November.

On where the program is currently versus where he envisioned it would be when he started

Yeah, that’s a unique question that I thought about often because when you look at a year ago, it makes you question and ask yourself the tough questions. And, you know, I doubt that there’d be very few people that have been around here since I got here in 2019 that would have a hard time saying that the program isn’t better than it was when I got here in 2019 because we all know what I walked into, what we’ve been able to build, we’ve navigated COVID, we’ve done something that hasn’t happened here in 130 years in Maryland football.

And then the goal post shifted with the landscape, we’ve pivoted, navigated, there’s been change. That’s the newness that keeps me really excited about what this year brings because, you know, I see this year being a year of elevation for us because of the foundation that we were able to build over the last six seasons. That’ll allow us to bounce back quickly.

On the excitement of the younger players going back to the spring

You know, I always use this analogy of throwing a snake in the crib with a baby. That’s what it’s kind of been like for me because they don’t know what they don’t know. They haven’t been conditioned, based on experiences and games of how good the type of teams they’re going to face. And so that eagerness for them to compete is why I’m excited. I mean, some people see it as a negative. I see it as a really positive thing because I don’t know but the people we play don’t know either. What they’re going to see or what they’re going to face. And it’s my job and our staff’s job to create structure and boundaries that allow these guys to excel on the field and and then bounce back the way we want our program to bounce back.

On learning the business aspect of NIL

You know, the social equity that I’ve been afforded, being a part of starting an organization that helps coaches develop to become head coaches, it’s afforded me to be able to pick up the phone and call guys like Rick Smith, whose son Robert Smith played here. Rick was a longtime vice president of football, GM, over there with the Houston Texans. Rick has been on speed dial for me, being able to talk to the GM career down in Miami. He was on the board of my foundation I created. He’s one of those guys that, when I had questions, I picked up the phone and said, how did you manage your players? We started playing and practicing with the salary cap four years ago when COVID hit. And I kind of anticipated that this is where we would go. I got their salary cap. You had Brian Griffin here, and then Gerald Dixon, who’s going to be back here, both with NFL experience, brought their caps in and educated me on how the cap worked, how the starting quarterback in the NFL, if he’s a high level quarterback, he’s going to get close to 18% of the total cap. Hence why you see $50 million quarterbacks. And understanding that, to me, I’ve always used the ability to educate myself, make mistakes, learn, fail, grow. Those are the building blocks for winning championships.

And to me, I utilize the social equity of people I know in the business, being able to pick up the phone and talk to people like those guys. Chris Greer couldn’t remember his name. I’m getting old. But between Chris and Rick, and even talking to Mike T up at Pittsburgh, and how they manage these caps. And then even when you come to the locker room, a couple of years ago, there have been a lot of teams that face what I faced. Most of them haven’t come out publicly to say what I said. But you see it across the college landscape of teams that have had tough years and then bounced back pretty quickly once they’ve kind of navigated what this new landscape brought to our locker room a year ago. Thank you very much, guys.