By Ethan Cadeaux
Although Maryland football’s highly anticipated road battle with the Texas Longhorns is just over three weeks away, Terrapins’ head coach DJ Durkin has yet to name his starting quarterback.
“I don’t have a set date or day or time when we want to make some sort of decision,” Durkin said. “I want to let it sort itself out on the field and let the players decide.”
Caleb Henderson, a junior transfer from North Carolina, sophomores Tyrrell Pigrome and Max Bortenschlager, and freshman Kasim Hill all have the possibility of winning the quarterback job in the first season since the tumultuous Perry Hills-Caleb Rowe era.
“We haven’t really had any scrimmages or anything like that,” Durkin said. “We’re still going with what our plan was going into camp in terms of dividing up the reps and keeping them even on how many reps they’re getting, how many reps with the ones or the twos.”
Wednesday’s practice only marked Maryland’s seventh of fall camp. Durkin still has plenty of time before the opener as to who will be his signal caller.
“After we get through our first big scrimmage this weekend, I think we’ll start to adjust and alter what those reps are,” he said.
While Henderson may be a slight edge to win the job, he’s currently dealing with an injury that could alter the competition. Durkin said “he’s probably somewhere around 85 or 90 [percent],” but is “able to do everything at practice.”
In such a close competition, Henderson cannot afford to miss time. After spending two years at North Carolina buried on the depth chart behind Marquise Williams and current Chicago Bears’ quarterback Mitchell Trubisky, Henderson transferred to Maryland with the goal to earn a starting quarterback job.
“I think it’s competitive,” sophomore running back Lorenzo Harrison said on the quarterback competition. “We have a lot of guys working hard, trying to get the No. 1 spot. I’m waiting to see who comes out No. 1.”
Pigrome appeared in 11 games his freshman season, and showed flashes of what he could be. But perhaps the most intriguing candidate for the starting job is freshman Kasim Hill, who has impressed Durkin thus far in camp.
“Kasim’s doing great,” Durkin said of the former four-star recruit. “He doesn’t look like a freshman. He’s very mature, how he approaches meetings, and really everything he does has been great.”
The current freshmen class is Durkin’s first full recruiting class, so it’ll be interesting to watch how many of them touch the field in year one. It wouldn’t be a shock if Hill was one of the first ones to do so.
