In KERNERSVILLE, N.C. —
As college approached in 2009, Danny O’Brien entered what he calls some of the worst months of his life.
University of Maryland sophomore quarterback Danny O'Brien will play in a conference (ACC) that is loaded at the quarterback position. In this spotlight video, O'Brien talks about the upcoming season, his goals, and what the Terps can accomplish.
He would look down to see red welts covering his arms, chest and sides of his abdomen, the effects from a severe and seemingly unstoppable case of poison ivy. At night, he’d scratch more than sleep. Then, by the time summer workouts at Maryland started, O’Brien struggled to find energy, his usual zealous demeanor crippled by yet another malady, a reaction to mononucleosis that left him sluggish and dazed.
“It was like hell,” O’Brien says.
How O’Brien wound up confronting the double dose of illnesses provides a window into the mind of Maryland’s sophomore quarterback, who has been described as everything from “extraordinary” to “unusual” by family members, friends and coaches. Those adjectives have little to do with his right arm — which helped him win last season’s ACC rookie of the year award — and everything to do with how the 20-year-old thinks. Whether it’s dissecting game tape or dealing with personal hardship, O’Brien approaches life with a level of poise and focus that even those closest to him view with admiration and curiosity.
Todd Willert, O’Brien’s coach at East Forsyth High who remains close to O’Brien’s family, said: “It’s almost like he needs obstacles in his life because he needs the challenge. Seriously.”
O’Brien’s 14-year-old sister, Bridget, remembers when her brother started urging her to make short- and long-term goals and post them on the wall. Most impressive were their ages: O’Brien was in middle school, Bridget was in kindergarten.
Willert recalls the day when his senior starting quarterback, Kenny Swab, approached him with a novel idea: Swab would move to wide receiver because it was time for O’Brien, then a lanky sophomore, to become the starting varsity quarterback.
And Randy Edsall, Maryland’s first-year head football coach, needed only one encounter with O’Brien to know he is a “rare individual.” During Edsall’s initial meeting with his new players, he asked if anyone had questions.
O’Brien had two: “When am I getting a playbook? When are you going to hire the offensive coordinator?”
“I knew right then and there,” Edsall says, “that I have a special guy.”
An analytical mind
Long before O’Brien was the face of Maryland football, he lived with his parents and younger sisters, Nellie and Bridget, in the St. Paul, Minn., area. O’Brien shoveled snow merely so he could shoot hoops. His father bought him an action figure of Dan O’Brien, the former decathlete, and sat with his son to build a 3,000-piece Lego pirate ship from a box larger than the 4-year-old boy.
But O’Brien’s parents, Matt and Janie, eventually divorced. By the summer after the fifth grade, O’Brien had moved with his sisters, mother and stepfather Steve Wright to Kernersville, N.C., a quaint suburban community between Greensboro and Winston-Salem.
To leave Minnesota, “at first I hated it,” O’Brien says. “Hated it.” The divorce weighed on O’Brien, as well, but also strengthened his relationship with his sisters, with them leaning on him for support.
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