Mike Locksley looking to 'Elevate' Terrapin football program in 2025

Seventh-year Maryland Head Coach Mike Locksley is heading into his most important season in his tenure at Maryland, and the prognosticators are not seeing an improvement coming in 2025, with most projections having the Terps finishing near the bottom of the Big Ten.

Coming off a disappointing 4-8 record, in which he went 1-8 in the Big Ten, Locksley wanted to erase the stench from the season right away as he almost instantly presented a new theme for the 2025 season. The theme is “Elevate.” His focus in the offseason is on elevating the program through changes in the coaching staff, the energy in the locker room, and the standard in training activities, which will help the team get back to the team that won postseason bowl games the previous three seasons, as he said in Tuesday’s press conference.

“[Elevate is] a word I've been using since Dec. 1, when, as I like to say, the church doors opened up,” Locksley explained. “A year ago, we didn't meet our standard. We didn't meet the expectations that we created for ourselves, but there's still a lot of positive momentum about our Maryland football program.”

Locksley is not wrong about having positive momentum for the program. Maryland had six players selected in the NFL Draft this past May, which is behind only Ohio State (14), Oregon (10), and Michigan (seven). The Terps had more players drafted than Penn State, which had only five.

Maryland's 2025 recruiting class is the second-best recruiting class in the history of the program, and the Terps are also bringing back key contributing starters, along with some potential hidden gems from the transfer portal. There's no question that Locksley's goal of elevating the program is within reach in 2025, and his coaching future in College Park may depend on it.

“We're continuing to elevate that talent,” Locksley said. "We've embarked on recruiting the best two high school recruiting classes that we've seen in the history of Maryland football, ranking only behind the 2021 recruiting class, and half of those guys that we signed were able to enroll and participate early in our winter and spring programs, which gives us an opportunity to see those guys as early as possible."

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