Terps cut things close — perhaps too close — in season opener

It wouldn't be a huge shock if this Terrapins football team wins ugly, and wins ugly often under Randy Edsall. Grinding out games, holding on to the ball and winning close worked for him as the coach at Connecticut, and it could work for him in College Park.

But there's a fine line between playing with caution and playing with fire.

Last night, the Terps didn't win ugly. They won dangerously.

What should have been a sizable victory turned into a nailbiter because the Terps were completely inept in the red zone, settling for field-goal attempts in all but two of their seven trips inside the 20.

For the first quarter of the game, it didn't seem like we'd see the Terps live life on the wild side. Ironically, their offense looked a lot like the fast-paced "air raid" attack that made former Texas Tech coach Mike Leach such a popular choice for the Terps' coaching job, not the ground-and-pound attack that Edsall preferred with the Huskies.

Then O'Brien threw an interception in the end zone, and things started to get interesting — perhaps too interesting for Edsall.

"I'm going to accentuate the positive," Edsall said afterward. "If you think I'm going to be up here, upset that we won, that we beat a team like the University of Miami and with the athletes that they have, and to watch these young men go and preserve and come back and go down and do all those things; I know there's things out there, but boy, I'm not going to dwell on those things."

The Terps settled for a field goal in the next red-zone trip, and then another in their next. All of a sudden, their fluid offense was stagnant, and the Hurricanes were raging back into the game.

"We did really good, I think, in the field when we were freewheeling," O'Brien said. "And when we got in the red zone, and for whatever reason just came up with three. And I think, to win consistently, we're going to have to score in the red zone because we move the ball great."

"If we can punch those in, I think things would have been a little different," O'Brien added. "We could have put a lot of points up."

Even after defensive tackle Joe Vellano somehow gave the Terps a lead heading into halftime with a miraculous pickup and sprint, it was clear the realities of football had caught up to the Terps.

You can't get away with woeful red-zone offense against a team like Florida State. You can't get away with poor kickoff coverage against a team like Virginia Tech. In their next game, against Big East power West Virginia, a performance like this will almost certainly spell defeat.

But against a handicapped Miami team, and with a quarterback like Danny O'Brien, the Terps did just enough. His 52-yard bomb to set up the game-winning field goal might have heralded his arrival as not just an elite ACC quarterback but one of the best in the country. And who knows, if he plays like he did tonight, the Terps might even win pretty in the future.

When it's all said and done, though, people aren't going to remember the Terps' red-zone inefficiency or Nick Ferrara's missed chip shot or the team's wasted opportunities. The lasting image will be of the Terps, in their state-flag-covered uniforms, winning the first game of the Randy Edsall era.

And maybe that's what's really important. Maybe the opportunity afforded to Edsall — one to erase memories of a mediocre Terps football team and prove things really have changed in College Park — is more important than any statistic.

But this isn't the formula for long-term success, or even a successful season. Other teams will make you pay for missed chances.

It was an exciting victory for the Terps at a sold-out Byrd on national television. Games like last night's can reignite a fanbase that is seemingly buying more and more into the Terps' new look. And cornerback Cameron Chism's pick-six in the final minute to all but seal the victory certainly was a nice, almost fitting way to end it.

It just shouldn't have been needed in the first place.

schneider@umdbk.com