Locksley, Fitzgerald focused on own teams despite familiarity
While most Maryland fans remember current head coach Michael Locksley as a key member of Ralph Friedgen’s staff during the Terps’ 2001 ACC Championship run, some might not remember Locksley was one of just two staff members, along with current Penn State head coach James Franklin, retained by Friedgen following the firing of Ron Vanderlinden.
Vanderlinden was hired by Maryland in 1997 following a five-year stint as defensive coordinator and linebackers coach at Northwestern in which he helped the Wildcats to back-to-back Big Ten titles.
The star of those Northwestern teams? Linebacker Pat Fitzgerald, who was named Big Ten Defensive Player of the Year in 1995 and '96, as well as being named a two-time All-American and a two-time winner of the Bednarik and Nagurski Awards.
When Vanderlinden took over at Maryland in ‘97, he hired a young up-and-coming Locksley to oversee the running backs. A year later, his former star pupil Pat Fitzgerald would join the Terps’ staff as a graduate assistant.
Locksley and Fitzgerald only spent one season together in College Park, but the two have remained close ever since.
“Mike Locksley and I have known each other for a long time,” Fitzgerald said at his weekly press conference. “Just have the utmost respect for Locks. I’ll go back to when I started in the coaching profession, I was actually a graduate assistant coach at the University of Maryland and Coach Locks was on the staff and we’ve been close ever since. He’s had an amazing career. He’s put together an outstanding staff and now in Year Two, as you watch as the season went along last year, you started to see that team was starting to take on his personality and his identity. And that will obviously continue, I’m sure, as it went through an abnormal offseason but then through their camp. He’s done just a great job in recruiting and he’s been a developer everywhere he’s been and you see the success he’s had everywhere he’s been. Just great respect and great friendship with Locks. I look forward to seeing him pregame to say the least. I’ll be rooting for him every game, but not Saturday night.”
Locksley had similar praise for Fitzgerald as the two prepare to face off against each other as head coaches for the first time in their careers.
“I have a lot of respect for Pat,” said Locksley during his weekly press conference. “I was here under Ron Vanderlinden who was Pat’s mentor who coached Pat at Northwestern, two-time All-American and well respected football player in his own right. So coming here under the Vanderlinden regime and getting to know him as a young former player turned coach, the thing that jumped out is just how detailed he was and it was something you knew he would be successful at. Then I had a chance to watch him grow as a young assistant, when he took over the Northwestern program under those adverse conditions of losing their head football coach. Me being at Illinois at the time, and the natural rivalry between Illinois and Northwestern, so there’s always been a fondness as far as me and our relationship and how it’s grown over the years. But also a great amount of respect I have for the job he’s done at a program like Northwestern, which prior to going to the Rose Bowl his senior year, hadn’t had a lot of success. He’s been able to build on that and keep it going for a long time, so it’s a program I have a lot of respect for.”
While there is certainly plenty of familiarity between Locksley and Fitzgerald, both coaches had some staff changes this offseason and Saturday night will mark the Terps’ first-ever trip to Evanston.
With so little history between the programs and with new faces on each sideline, one has to wonder if Saturday’s season opener might almost feel like a non-conference game.
“This will feel like a Big Ten game, no doubt about it, but it will feel like taking on a new staff,” Fitzgerald said. “And with that is your offseason preparation. And going through the video from last year, there’s been some staff changes on Locks’ staff in the offseason. So doing the research there and getting as prepared as we can.”
Maryland began preparing for Northwestern last week. And while knowing your opponent could make one feel like they have an edge, both coaches seemed to agree that in the opener especially, it is more about focusing on themselves more than their opponent.
“You really got to focus on your own team,” said Fitzgerald. “You’ve got to focus on your preparation and the way you start the game and then the way you are going to have to adjust. And we’ll anticipate having all of those, hopefully, in place with some in our control and some out of our control. But our focus will be on us.”
As for Maryland, the key, according to Locksley, is to continue to improve in areas they can control on their own, namely unforced mistakes.
“I think the big piece of it for us is discipline will define our season,” said Locksley. “We still have way too many self-inflicted errors. We have referees out at practice every day and we have the Big Ten officials here. Still too many of the self-inflicted penalties. The false starts, the offside penalties. These are all things we can control.
“I just hate when we beat ourselves and I can tell you, playing Northwestern, they are one of those teams, they don’t beat themselves. They do what they do on offense, defense and special teams. They put you in a situation where you go out and beat yourself. They don’t do that. Good teams don’t beat themselves.”