Sophomore slump and Maryland preview

What is the deal with a Sophomore slump? It makes no sense. Usually a player makes his biggest jump in production from his freshman to his sophomore year. They adjust to the speed of the game, they get in the weight room and they have more familiarity with their coaches, teammates and the system. So freshman with average years can come back and be good to great their sophomore year. You might not see much improvement after the sophomore year, but there is a big jump after the freshman year. This is the reason the red-shirt is such an effective tool for mid-major basketball programs. They realize you get very little out of most true freshman, so they red-shirt almost all of them and then do damage in March with a ton of fourth year juniors or fifth year seniors.

But for some reason when a player has a great freshman year, there is a significant amount of players who take a dump on themselves their sophomore year.

Two examples of each case are the QBs at Clemson and Maryland. Holy crap, has Tahj Boyd improved from his freshman year (all be it a red-shirt freshman year). This, after a freshman year where even in his limited action he looked very inaccurate and confused. Plus, you would like to hope if he was this good last year in practice he would have unseated Kyle Parker (another soph slump guy).

Maryland had Freshman Danny O'Brien at QB last year and threw for over 200 yards per game and 22 TDs with eight picks. This year he is throwing for less than 150 yards per game, only four TDs and already has six interceptions through six games. He may not even get the start Sat. in favor of fellow Soph. C.J. Brown. Two programs going in totally different directions mainly because of the play of the QB.

Of course there is always more factors to consider. Is Tahj that much better or is it mostly due to Chad Morris' system? Would anybody look great throwing to NFL WR Sammy Watkins, NFL possibility Nuke Hopkins and NFL TE Dwayne Allen? Did he just work his butt off in the summer? Was he pretty good last year, but just didn't get a chance to settle in (I don't think this one is true)? Is there film on O'Brien now, so defenses know his tendencies? Is the new OC at Maryland much more a Napier and the old one more like a Morris? Did the fear of Ralph Friedgen eating him for a halftime snack help motivate O'Brien to greatness? These are all questions very difficult to answer.

What I do know is Maryland is a dangerous place. Playing at night will help. The crowd will be slightly louder, but that is much less of a fear than the Tigers sleep walking through a day game. I've been to Byrd, crowd noise will only be a factor on a few 3rd downs. Weather isn't too much of a factor. Low 60s but very windy. It is a misconception that wind effects a throwing team. Wind effects the crappier QB. A guy who throws a tight spiral is not effected very much by the wind (I should know, I was an Intramural Quarterback, haha). Look at Jim Kelly and Brett Favre. They were amazing in bad conditions because they threw tight spiral lasers. Hopefully Jim Kelly's son (heading to Clemson) will do the same. Anyway, Tigers will be in more of a fight than fans would like and hopefully Tahj isn't jumpy with his new hip injury. (BTW - he was not wearing a hip pad when he got injured! WTF - why weren't you wearing a hip pad? Apparently, all Dabo kept saying over and over was "Why the hell aren't you wearing a hip pad?") Tigers will hopefully prevail to move to 7 dash 0.

Clemson 30
Maryland 20