Danny O Brien

The quarterback debate that went on for much of Maryland's dismal 2011 season ended last Saturday night, when Danny O'Brien was thrown to the turf at FedEx Field in a 45-21 loss to Notre Dame and broke a bone in his left arm. But that doesn't mean the questioning that has swirled around O'Brien and C.J. Brown — as well as first-year Terps coach Randy Edsall — is over when it comes to next season and beyond. Brown, who started in place of a struggling O'Brien for two games earlier this season before being knocked out at Florida State with a concussion, will start Saturday when Maryland (2-8, 1-6 in the Atlantic Coast Conference)

At his weekly news conference Tuesday in College Park, Maryland football coach Randy Edsall said that injured quarterback Danny O'Brien would need about 12 weeks to recover from a broken bone in his left arm suffered in last Saturday's 45-21 loss to Notre Dame at FedEx Field. Edsall said he expected O'Brien to be back in the spring competing for the starting job with C.J. Brown. But later, when asked about speculation that O'Brien might transfer after graduating in the spring, Edsall made an interesting comment that is bound to stir things up among the Maryland faithful - and maybe in O'Brien's family.

As a reporter covering Maryland football, you begin to feel you're asking the same questions after each game these days.  You ask about the effort, about the tackling, the receiver drops, the slow starts. The bottom line is that the Terps often look outmanned, particularly against a solid team like Notre Dame, which may be headed to the Champs Sports Bowl. The Terps went to that bowl game in Florida in 2006. Remember? Maryland's last interesting game was nearly a month ago against Clemson.

LANDOVER - When the Notre Dame game was scheduled in March 2010, Maryland proudly said the meeting would be "a statement game for our Terps football program. " But a statement of what? Notre Dame's 45-21 victory in the second-ever meeting between the teams seemed merely to reinforce that this is a season that long ago began to wear thin for Terps fans. It wasn't just the outcome that stung. It was also the sight of starting quarterback Danny O'Brien being escorted off the field in the third quarter gingerly elevating his left arm. O'Brien, last season's Atlantic Coast Conference rookie of the year, broke a bone in the upper arm and is out for the season, coach Randy Edsall said.

I guess it wasn't just a throwaway line when Randy Edsall said he might use two quarterbacks. Danny O'Brien started and has thrown some nice balls. He's 8-for-15 for 133 yards and has been victimized (again) by drops. Quel surprise. Then C.J. Brown entered in the second quarter. Then O'Brien returned. So who is the quarterback? BrownO'Brien? O'Brown? Thanks to Conor Walsh for the O'Brown moniker. The Terps are more competitive this week but are again surrendering big yardage, particularly on the ground.

Twenty seconds. That's how long it took for Maryland's sunny-weather, Senior Day mood to be punctured as Virginia bolted to a touchdown on its first offensive play, producing a swift smattering of boos from Terps fans whose team has now lost five straight games. Virginia's 31-13 victory Saturday contained many of the elements that have characterized Maryland's recent losses -- inconsistent tackling, errors (five turnovers) and a string of dropped passes that seemed to mystify the quarterbacks and coach Randy Edsall.

It's hard to know which would have been the more long-shot prediction at the beginning of the football season: that it would snow in October or that Maryland would be dismantled at home by a 1-6 Boston College team looking for its first conference victory. Both happened at Byrd Stadium on Saturday -- intermittent snow flurries two days before Halloween and a 28-17 beatdown of a Maryland team that has lost four games in a row and six of seven in coach Randy Edsall's first season and might have hit its low point.

Maryland linebacker Kenny Tate, a preseason all-conference pick who starred at safety last season, will undergo surgery and miss the rest of the season, coach Randy Edsall said Sunday. Edsall said Tate, a senior and team captain, will seek a medical redshirt to return in 2012. Following surgery, he will be out six to nine months, according to the school. Edsall would not disclose the nature of Tate's injury. "This is just something that he's had. He's just taken a hit in one of the games this year," the coach said.

This could not have been the way Maryland envisioned Saturday's game unfolding -- with its new quarterback dazed by a head-high tackle and the former starter trying to resurrect his team in a season that has now seen the Terps lose five of their past six contests. Florida State's cavernous Doak Campbell Stadium has never been a place for Maryland to seek sanctuary. It proved unfriendly again as the Seminoles knocked quarterback C.J. Brown from the game in the third quarter and beat the Terps, 41-16.

Maryland's 41-16 loss to Florida State was one of those dispiriting games for Terps fans in which the team trailed so quickly that there was a sense of forever trying to swim upstream. But there were interesting developments nonetheless that occurred later in the game: *I was intrigued by the fact that Danny O'Brien came in and immediately began throwing downfield. This is a Maryland team that has seemed protective of its quarterbacks. For much of C.J. Brown's playing time, the game plan had seemed to be to get the ball out of the quarterback's hand swiftly on short throws, That's understandable to a point given Florida State's fierce pass rush (six sacks)