D4 EZ SU THE WASHINGTON POST.THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 5 , 2019
BY EMILY GIAMBALVOMaryland’s football team
opened the Michael Locksley era
with ease, dominating its season
debut to the extent that four quar-
terbacks had the chance to lead
drives and the first-team players
essentially closed up shop at half-
time. But the reality of Saturday’s
79-0 v ictory, w hich featured 11 Te r-
rapins touchdowns and a lock-
down defense, was that the oppo-
nent was, well, Howard. The Foot-
ball Championship Subdivision
foe bears little resemblance to
what the Terrapins will face when
No. 21 Syracuse marches into Col-
lege Park t his weekend.
So how much does that Howard
win really m ean? Do s eason-open-
ing blowouts provide any insight
into how a team’s season will un-
fold? Maryland players say they
won’t dwell on the result, and
Locksley made note of the team’s
correctable mistakes the moment
he stepped to the lectern to speak
with reporters after the game. But
recent h istory says teams that w in
openers by 50 points o r more typi-
cally finish with more victories
based on overall win totals in the
top-tier Football Bowl Subdivi-
sion.
Since 2000, the year Sports-Ref-
erence’s single-game database be-
gins, the average season win total
for a n FBS team is 6.5. In t hat same
period of time and not counting
this season, 101 FBS teams have
won their season openers by at
least 50 points; the average win
total for those teams jumps to 8.3.
This isn’t to say that a season-
opening blowout causes a team to
win more games in a season. It
simply means these programs are
more likely to be the same ones
that go o n to finish the year well.“That’s definitely a confidence-
booster,” linebacker Shaq Smith
said of the win against Howard,
“but in the same b reath, we have a
24-hour rule, where we celebrate
that game on S aturday b ut Sunday
we flip the page and we’re getting
ready f or our next g ame.”
There are still a handful of cau-
tionary examples, which can re-
mind fans that a strong debut
might not indicate promise. Tulsa
defeated Indiana State, 51-0, to
begin the 2001 season and then
went winless the rest of the sea-son. Four times since 2000, teams
have won their openers by at least
50 only to finish t he y ear with a 3-9
record (Louisiana Te ch in 2000,
Eastern Michigan in 2008, Geor-
gia Te ch in 2015 and Marshall in
2016).
But about 85 percent of the
time, these teams finish the year
bowl eligible. Maryland falling
short of a bowl game, which is the
outcome projected by some ad-
vanced analytics, would be atypi-
cal.
Against Howard, Maryland
jumped to a 28-0 l ead by the e nd of
the f irst quarter and a 56-0 a dvan-
tage by halftime. Locksley re-
moved his starters, giving the re-
serves valuable game experience,
but the Te rps continued to drive
down the field without issues,
leading to the massive margin of
victory. T he 79-point win stands a s
the second-largest margin of vic-
tory for an FBS team in its season
opener since 2000, behind only
Oklahoma State’s 84-point win
over S avannah State in 2 012.
Maybe this provides optimism,
something to hold on to even
though Saturday’s FCS opponent
offered little opportunity to
glimpse how this team will oper-
ate under Locksley. Maybe t he lop-sided result means the Terps are
more likely to outperform expec-
tations this season.
But inside the program, “we’re
more about the process of how we
practice, how we prepare, how we
execute each and every play,”
Locksley said in a response that
would make Nick Saban, his for-
mer boss at Alabama and cham-
pion of the Process, proud. “A nd
the scoreboard to us, we try not to
let that even come into play when
we game plan.... The key is to go
in and get the corrections made
for the fundamental mistakes or
the m ental errors that t ook p lace.”
So about those improvements.
The 79-0 result screams there
were few mistakes, at least not
glaring ones, but the players have
pinpointed the areas that need
work. It would be unnatural for
them not to.
In h is Maryland d ebut that e nd-
ed at halftime, quarterback Josh
Jackson threw for 245 yards and
four touchdowns with no inter-
ceptions. But on Tuesday, he rat-
tled off some of his less-than-per-
fect moments — when he targeted
and missed DJ Turner downfield
on third and five rather than w ork-
ing through his progressions and
some pre-snap penalties. (Mary-land still finished the game with
only 45 yards in penalties, a prob-
lem area last season.) And the
defense, which didn’t allow any
points and held Howard to just
one first down in the first half,
could have communicated better,
Locksley s aid.
“Pre-snap, post-snap, even dur-
ing the play, when we get back on
the s ideline, communicating w hat
we’re seeing and the adjustments
that we have to make,” said Smith,
a graduate transfer from C lemson,
the top-tier program that lost to
Syracuse in 2017 and nearly lost
again in 2018. “That’s the biggest
thing that we took from that first
game that we’ve been harping on
thus far that’s g oing to help us this
week.”
That’s where these players will
direct their focus, not leaning on
the opener that came as a wel-
comed start. Four other programs
around the country — LSU, Penn
State, Washington State and Cen-
tral Florida — also had wins of at
least 50 points to begin their sea-
son. History proves most teams
that fall into this category will go
on to have successful seasons, so
now Maryland will hope i t doesn’t
become an outlier.
[email protected]For Maryland, past performance does not necessarily predict future results
FROM NEWS SERVICES
AND STAFF REPORTSAntonio Brown hasn’t had the
smoothest adjustment to his off-
season move to the Oakland Raid-
ers. He fought unsuccessfully to
use a helmet that has been banned
and had a well-documented ab-
sence from training camp because
of frostbite from a cryotherapy
mishap.
The latest drama: Brown went
public with his unhappiness over
being fined nearly $54,000 by the
Raiders. On Instagram this week,
he shared an image of a letter in
which Mike Mayock, the team’s
general manager, explained that
Brown had been fined for missing
a walk-through and noted that he
had been previously fined for
missing t raining camp.
“When your own team want to
hate but there’s no stopping me
now d evil i s a lie,” B rown wrote on
Instagram. “Everyone got to pay
this year so we clear.”
— C indy Boren
l BROWNS: Cleveland Coach
Freddie Kitchens said star wide
receiver Odell Beckham Jr. is
“ready t o go” f or the season opener
against the Tennessee Titans after
not playing in any exhibition
games.
Beckham sat out Cleveland’s
four preseason games with what
the team described as a minor hip
injury. The three-time Pro Bowl
selection also missed most of the
Browns’ voluntary offseason
workout program following his
trade i n March from t he New York
Giants.
l JETS: Le’Veon B ell has w aited
long enough.
The star running back will
make his debut for New York on
Sunday in the season opener
against the Buffalo Bills. And he’s
looking to pick up right where he
left o ff.
“I can’t e ven explain i t, b ro,” B ell
said Wednesday. “It’s been a long
time since I played football. A lot
of people are excited to watch me
play. Just quadruple that. That’s
how excited I am to play.”
Bell sat out all last season in a
contract dispute, became a free
agent, signed a four-year,
$52.5 million deal with the Jets in
the offseason and then went
through the preseason without
taking a snap in a game. So when
he takes the field for New York,
Bell wants to hit the ground run-
ning. L iterally.
“I can’t predict how many plays
we’re going to have, but I will say
this: When I spoke to him [Tues-
day], he said, ‘Don’t hold back,’ ”
Coach Adam Gase said. “So he
feels like he’s ready to go, and I
think he’s pretty excited to get out
there.”
l TITANS: Ryan Succop
thought his leg had recovered
enough for him to kick in Tennes-
see’s s eason opener.
It turns out the veteran needs a
few more weeks. The Titans
placed Succop on injured reserve
and s igned veteran Cairo S antos.
l OBITUARY: Bobby Dillon,
the Green Bay Packers’ career
leader in interceptions who lost
his left eye following two child-
hood accidents, died Aug. 22 in
Te mple, Te x. He w as 89.
— Associated PressNFL NOTESBrown
lashes out
at Raiders
after fine
BY MARK MASKEDallas Cowboys owner Jerry
Jones was on Wall Street to ring
the opening bell Wednesday
morning at the New York Stock
Exchange as part of his role as a
major investor in energy compa-
ny Comstock Resources.
That wasn’t the only way in
which Jones was doing his part
to stimulate the national econo-
my. He also handed a six-year,
$90 million contract extension
to the C owboys’ centerpiece, Eze-
kiel Elliott, making him the
NFL’s highest-paid running
back.
Elliott will make $102.9 mil-
lion over the next eight seasons,
including the two years and
$12.9 million left on his existing
contract.
“I just turned my pockets out
upstairs,” Jones told CNBC. “It
means I’m $100 million lighter
as of this morning.”
Jones and the Cowboys have
been on a bit of a spending spree
in recent weeks, striking deals
with linebacker Jaylon Smith,
right t ackle La’el Collins and now
Elliott. They still must deal with
quarterback Dak Prescott and
wide receiver Amari Cooper.
The Cowboys accommodated
Elliott’s demand for a new deal
even with two seasons remaining
on his rookie contract (including
the fifth-year option previously
exercised by the team), narrowly
avoiding having Elliott’s holdout
spill over i nto t he regular season.
That speaks to Elliott’s value
at what has become a mostly
devalued position in the NFL. It
also speaks, perhaps, to Jones
not wanting to take any chances
about disrupting a season in
which the Cowboys might have a
chance to return to the Super
Bowl.
“Zeke allows us to create such
problems for the defense that
then we can open it up to our
passing, open it up to Dak
Prescott,” J ones said in his CNBC
interview. “Of course, we’ve got
to have some guys on defense to
get those [offensive] guys the
ball. That’s what this is all
about.”
The Cowboys could have taken
a harder-line stance with Elliott,
refusing to negotiate an exten-
sion with him, a s the Los AngelesChargers are doing with holdout
running back Melvin Gordon.
They could have held the negoti-
ating line below the $14.375 mil-
lion per season that running
back To dd Gurley got last year as
part of his four-year deal with
the Los Angeles Rams, a contract
that looks less prudent now con-
sidering Gurley’s knee issues.
This is, after all, a passing-first
league. Productive running
backs can be found just about
anywhere, in any round of the
draft. And they generally are
discarded quickly, before their
30th birthdays. For NFL teams,
that’s usually not a wise manner
in which to invest.
But Elliott is a notable excep-
tion. He has led the league in
rushing in two of his three NFL
seasons. He and Jim Brown are
the only two running backs in
league history, with a minimum
of 750 career rushing attempts,
to average more than 100 rush-
ing yards per game.
He is the focal point of the
Dallas offense. He makes
Prescott better.
With Elliott, t he Cowboys are a
pretty complete team and a legit-imate contender. They’re coming
off an NFC East-winning season
in 2018. They have a dependable
quarterback in Prescott, a stand-
out receiver in Cooper, an excel-
lent offensive line and a defense
that was ranked in the league’s
top 10 last season.
Without Elliott, who knows?
To o much could be asked of
Prescott. Opposing defenses
could take away Cooper in the
passing game. The Dallas de-
fense could be on the field too
often and stretched too thin.
A return to the Super Bowl for
the first time since the 1995
season cannot be secured early
in the season. But it could have
been lost amid struggles without
Elliott. Not now, with Elliott back
on the practice field Wednesday
and likely to play in Sunday’s
season opener against the New
York Giants.
“Zeke has been arguably our
best player,” Jones said. “I’m not
trying to be unfair to anybody
else. But he’s an [integral] part to
our success.... He plays a posi-
tion that has some pretty inter-
esting dynamics to it because
running backs are short-lived,although we had what I consider
to be one of the top five greatest
ones in Emmitt Smith. And Em-
mitt ran the ball for 13 years [for
the Cowboys]. So you don’t have
to have a four- or five-year career
[as] a running back.”
Jones said during a radio in-
terview Tuesday on 105.3 the Fan
in Dallas that “there’s no ques-
tion the pie is getting smaller” in
terms of signing Cowboys play-
ers to hefty extensions.
The price tag for Prescott isn’t
getting any smaller, given Jared
Goff ’s four-year, $134 million
deal Tuesday with the Rams and
Carson Wentz’s four-year,
$128 million extension in June
with the Philadelphia Eagles.
Prescott joined Elliott in the
Cowboys’ 2016 draft class. Next
he will join Elliott in the
$100 million contract club.
It will be money well spent for
Jones and the Cowboys, particu-
larly if Elliott and Prescott lead
the way in fully recapturing the
franchise’s on-field glory.
“Zeke has a big heart,” Jones
said Wednesday on CNBC. “Now
he’s got a thick pocketbook, too.”
[email protected]BY ADAM KILGOREIn t he spring of 2015, the Dallas
Cowboys faced a big-dollar deci-
sion on a star running back.
DeMarco Murray h ad led the NFL
with more than 1,800 rushing
yards the year before and then
become a free agent. The Cow-
boys watched him sign with the
Philadelphia Eagles for $42 mil-
lion over five seasons, letting
Murray walk at the apex of his
career.
The Cowboys endured a 4-12
season, which gifted them the
fourth pick in the 2016 NFL draft
that they used to select running
back Ezekiel Elliott. Those two
decisions — letting Murray walk
and then using a high pick on a
running back one year later —
were connected. The Cowboys
rightfully believed running backs
are their best when they are also
their youngest — and therefore
cheapest.
“One of our analytics guys said
most backs, they deserve to get
their money their first four years
in the league, and then they trick-
le off,” Cowboys personnel czar
Stephen Jones said back in 2016,
during Elliott’s brilliant rookie
season. “It certainly doesn’t hurt
to be paying” Elliott on his rookie
contract.
Read between the lines, and
the Cowboys’ vision seemed to be
treating Elliott the way they ap-
proached Murray: Wring out his
best years before his services be-
come expensive, and then have
the discipline to let a popular, star
player sign elsewhere.
Along the way, though, Elliott
became too valuable. In a league
that devalues running backs, El-
liott stands as an outlier, a game-
changer at the center of every-
thing his team does. He b oosts the
passing game with both his route-
running and, when asked, his
pass blocking. He helps Dallas’s
defense by keeping the Cowboys
on offense. He takes pressure off
quarterback Dak Prescott. He
transcends the modern template
of what a running back means to
a team.
His talent made the Cowboys
and owner Jerry Jones cave after
his summerlong holdout. On
Wednesday, Elliott agreed to a
six-year, $90 million contract ex-
tension, with $50 million of it
guaranteed. Contracts like that
tend to reshape positional mar-
kets, but it would be unwise to
assume Elliott is anything but an
outlier off the field, too.
So, sorry, Melvin Gordon, but
Elliott’s payday does not mean
your jackpot is imminent. The
Los Angeles Chargers have played
hardball during Gordon’s hold-
out, and that will be a far morecommon tack for teams facing a
holdout from a running back on a
rookie deal, which is a phenom-
enon likely to repeat in the com-
ing seasons.
Players such as Alvin Kamara,
Joe Mixon, Christian McCaffrey
and Dalvin Cook may hope their
teams submit to their demands
and give them an extension in the
same neighborhood of Elliott’s —
or even one in the same county.
But given how the NFL views
running backs, those potential
standoffs are more likely to end
up like Gordon’s: with the team
unwilling to budge and with the
player forced either to play out
his contract or sit out on princi-
ple.
NFL teams view running backs
as interchangeable and prone to
early decline, and so they would
rather use their salary cap on
other parts of the roster.
Elliott, simply put, is different.His talent is different. His versa-
tility is different. His primacy to
his team’s s uccess is different. His
situation is different: Elliott plays
for an owner who is 76 years old
and desperate to win his first
Super Bowl in nearly 25 years.
Two of the closest comps to
Elliott may be Kamara and Mc-
Caffrey, and both figure to create
challenging contract conun-
drums for their teams with strong
2019 seasons. But neither the
Saints nor the Panthers are quite
as reliant on their running backs
as the Cowboys are on Elliott.
If any running back could force
his team to pay a monstrous
extension in line with Elliott’s, it
may be the New York Giants’
Saquon Barkley. Aside from El-
liott, no running back is as crucial
to his team’s attack, and Barkley
provides the best approximation
of Elliott’s speed, power, elusive-
ness and pass-catching ability.The Giants made the rare move
of using a top-five pick on Bark-
ley, as the Cowboys did Elliott,
and they will be breaking in a
young quarterback as early as this
season, having used the sixth pick
in April’s draft on Daniel Jones.
Overall, though, the Cowboys
did not just offer a pathway for-
ward for teams seeking contrac-
tual harmony with a star running
back. They n eeded Elliott in a way
other teams, almost certainly, will
not think they need their running
back.
The Cowboys, remember,
drafted Elliott after showing the
NFL how and when to move on
from a running back. The Cow-
boys envisioned doing the same
with Elliott, and those plans for
how to handle Elliott’s contract
negotiations say more about the
state of the running back position
than what actually happened.
[email protected]ANALYSIS
Recognizing Elliott’s unusual value, Cowboys hand off $90 million
ANALYSIS
This deal
won’t start
a trend
in the NFL
VERNON BRYANT/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Ezekiel Elliott received a six-year, $90 million extension after holding out during camp, but other running backs don’t have his leverage.JULIO CORTEZ/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Coach Michael Locksley guided the Terrapins to a 79-0 win over
Howard in his first game, but tougher tests await in future weeks.