Randy Edsall should be stopped before he hurts Maryland any worse

That coach was Bob Knight, who had a fairly decent reputation when it came to discipline.

Even as the losses have piled up, Edsall still hasn’t gotten it. After the awful 38-7 loss to Temple, he declared that Maryland was rebuilding. Three days later, he claimed he wasn’t throwing anybody under the bus and then threw Ralph Friedgen, his predecessor, into a cage of hungry lions.

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After a good defensive performance against Georgia Tech, Edsall credited his coaches — without saying a word about the players who played so well.

The coup de grace, though, came last week.

Edsall was asked if he had regrets about the lost season. Oh sure, he said, he had regrets. Then he went on to say that he had watched Patriots owner Robert Kraft talking about “the Patriots way” in a TV interview.

“So I am sitting there and saying, ‘Wow, that’s all I’m trying to do here at Maryland,’ ” Edsall said to reporters. “And I said: ‘You know what? I must be doing something right because here is a guy, one of the most successful franchises in the NFL, basically saying the same things that I am saying and trying to instill in this program.’ ”

After a season that was a failure in every possible way, Edsall still insisted his way was right. Saturday, when he talked about reevaluating, Edsall brought up things such as making offseason workouts more competitive.

Oh, please.

How about reevaluating yourself? Does a career record of 76-80 make you exempt from that? (For the record, Leach was 84-43 in a much tougher league.) Does the fact that your failure ruined the last college football memories of your senior class — something Edsall never brings up — bother you at all?

No. Nothing bothers Edsall. He’s never wrong. He coached well; his players played bad. And wore their caps backward too often. The media was unfair. And he’s just like Bob Kraft and the Patriots.

Kevin Anderson should hand him a plane ticket to Boston today and suggest he go and study the Patriots up close for a while. Then Anderson needs to find a new football coach. Maryland deserves much better. It can’t possibly do worse.

For more from the author, visit his blog at www.feinsteinonthebrink.com