Former Baltimore high school coach Poggi leads Charlotte back home to face Terrapins

While Maryland doesn’t play an in-state opponent like Towson this week, the ties with Charlotte run deep thanks to players and personnel.

Those connections start with 49ers coach Biff Poggi, whose coaching roots go back to Gilman School and St. Francis Academy in his hometown of Baltimore. He took the Charlotte job this year after being on the offensive staff for Jim Harbaugh at Michigan.

“If you know Biff, you know he wants to run the football, he wants to play downhill,” Maryland coach Mike Locksley said Tuesday. “He’s kind of one of those guys who wants to make it a tough, gritty game, and thats what we expect.”

Locksley has known Poggi since 1997 when he was a Terrapin assistant and recruited some of Poggi’s players, as well as through his son, Kai Locksley, who played at Gilman as a dual-threat quarterback.

“Biff is one of those guys that’s similar to myself. He’s not just about developing them as football players, but development as people, and I know he develops really strong relationships,” Locksley said. “And through that, he and I became great friends, as well as obviously now competitors.”

After a 38-6 Week 1 win over his alma mater, Locksley acknowledged this matchup is another type of “homecoming” for Poggi and others in the 49ers’ program. Charlotte offensive coordinator Mike Miller was lured away from Maryland by Poggi after spending four seasons in College Park in a similar role. Multiple former Terrapins went with him to Charlotte, including defensive back Isaiah Hazel, fullback Joey Bearns and offensive lineman Ja’Khi Green.

“I know he’ll have his team ready to come play up here. It’s a kind of a homecoming for him and some of the players on his roster when you look across and see the amount of guys that are there with him that he had in high school. And those guys were really good players, so we expect him to come up and give us his best, and then he can expect to get ours,” Locksley said.

Maryland rotated through a lot of players in the win over Towson, including going into second and third options at quarterback and on the offensive line. Locksley has made doing so a hallmark in early-season games in pursuit of depth and experience. The switching was most evident on the line, with quarterback Taulia Tagovailoa on the receiving end of some hits and knockdowns at the end of plays.

“There was pressure, especially interior pressure for our quarterback early on. But after you review it, you see some of that is an example of our quarterback who doesn’t give up on plays,” Locksley said.

“It’s kind of hard for me,” Tagovailoa said of not wanting to waste a play. “Being very competitive, every play to us matters so much. When a play breaks down, you obviously want to be the problem solver to the play … it’s kind of a thing I’ve gotta manage.”

Locksley is “hopeful” that transfer right tackle Gottlieb Ayedze will be back this week after not playing in the opener due to injury, and after previously saying that there were “eight or nine guys” who could slot in, he sounded more optimistic about settling on a core group in front of Tagovailoa.

“Coming out of that first game, we have a pretty good understanding now of what those guys do in the game, and so this week, we’ll try to maybe solidify it a little bit. Maybe not have as much of the substitution there, and give guys a chance to jell and come together,” Locksley said.

“There’s some things that we’ll continue to clean up this week. As per normal for a team, you usually see that big jump between game one and game two. And we’re very hopeful now that we’ve got a game under our belt, some things that we need to get corrected we’ll be able to get corrected.”