How Maryland football could cause chaos in the CFP race
By Austin Lloyd
What makes the Terps so intimidating?
I understand that it’s easy to laugh at the thought of Maryland being a threat to the Big Ten’s front-runners, as the Terrapins just squeaked by Nebraska to hit 6-4 on the season. They also got demolished by Penn State just a couple of weeks ago, a feeling that Michigan clearly can’t relate to at the moment.
However, let’s all try to remember the subject matter here: Potential trap games for Michigan. Trap games are just that — games that trip teams up because they’re not expected to be particularly difficult when taken at face value. By that definition, Michigan’s battle with Maryland is about as tricky of “easy pickings” as we’ll ever see.
For starters, the Terrapins just hit bowl eligibility after having lost four games in a row, making sizable statements about both their momentum and overall competence; those are factors that make them far from the weakest squad to face.
Not only that but the Wolverines are set to travel into College Park right after going on the road to meet the Nittany Lions (which, again, are the toughest bunch they’ve encountered so far).
Beating opposition of their caliber in a physical, low-scoring fashion while being down a head coach would have any team riding on a high, laying the groundwork for what some would call a “hangover game.”
And before anyone shrugs off this phenomenon as something that Michigan is too good to fall victim to, just look at this example of it from last month, when Louisville lost heavily to Pittsburgh just days after convincingly beating a proven Notre Dame, the toughest foe this regular season had in store for the Cardinals.
Considering that the Cards are now 9-1 and Notre Dame is 7-3, them falling to the 2-8 Panthers by three scores shouldn’t even be scientifically possible — yet it happened nonetheless. If a Pitt team that sorry could get the edge over the best version of Louisville we’ve seen in years by 17 points, all because it caught the Cards at a bad time, then a winning Terps team can surely get it over the Wolverines by at least one point now.