Terps' Defensive Coach Is Making His Mark

When Chris Cosh arrived in College Park last season, he quickly understood the delicate challenge in front of him. Within the team's hierarchy, Cosh had been tabbed as the top defensive coach, hired by Coach Ralph Friedgen to replace the retired Gary Blackney.

However, the bulk of Blackney's staff remained and the Terrapins boasted a roster dotted with players who had been in the program for three years or more. The Terrapins had an established way of doing things, and Cosh, the defensive coordinator, was simply the new guy.

"That's not an easy situation," Friedgen said. "And yet, I think he was able to handle that in a way that I thought was very clever. Some guys would come in and say, 'That's screwed up; this is the way you've got to do it.' He didn't do that."

But this season, Cosh's second as defensive coordinator, coaches and players say Cosh's fingerprints will be far more visible, an exciting prospect for a defensive unit that returns with heightened expectations.

"In the winter and spring, he started to progress and change a little bit of stuff here and there," defensive lineman Dre Moore said. "It slowly started to change. And now that we're in camp, it's a little bit different that what we've done in the past. It's noticeably different."

By the end of last season, it became clear that some degree of change was in order.

The Terrapins often were saved by their knack for making plays, especially in the fourth quarter of close games. Maryland allowed nearly 22 points per game, good enough to rank near the middle of the pack in the nation.

But for all their toughness in the clutch, the Terrapins were a statistical failure.

Those shortcomings were most noticeable in run defense, where Maryland ranked 96th in the nation. In the ACC, only Duke and North Carolina were more porous. The images of the Terrapins' brutal first half in West Virginia, which featured missed tackles and miscommunication, seemed to linger even as the defense finished with one of its best performances of the season against Purdue in the Champs Sports Bowl.

But even as the criticism mounted throughout the season, Cosh resisted the urge to make changes.

He focused on defensive concepts that were already in place, even if that meant learning new terminology.

"Here's a funny thing you don't think about," Cosh said. "There's not a universal language for football. They might know the concept, but with different words."

Things began to evolve after the season. Friedgen and Cosh evaluated the team's defensive performance during a series of candid talks. Friedgen, who counts the ability to break tendencies as one of his fortes as a coach, told Cosh the defense had become predictable.

From there, Cosh set about making several adjustments that he hopes will bring results this season.

"I'm kind of mixing the new with some of the old," Cosh said.

As part of the changes, the defensive lines won't shift as much before the snap, a tactic coaches thought had made it easier for opponents to anticipate the soft spots of the defense. Meantime, some of the adjustments should allow blitzers to come from different angles.

"I think in a general sense, offenses aren't going to be able to come out and know where we're going to line up with certain personnel," outside linebackers coach Al Seamonson said. "We're going to be more complex for teams to game plan against us than maybe we were a year ago. Teams are going to have to plan and prepare a little different than in the past."

Terrapins Notes: Reserve running back Pha'Terrell Washington and backup defensive back Taji Thornton have not been participating in fall practice. Instead, Coach Ralph Friedgen said both are enrolled in summer school to focus on academics. . . . Friedgen said quarterback Jordan Steffy has maintained his lead in the quarterback competition. But Friedgen said that generally he hasn't been as impressed as he had hoped with the quarterbacks.