Why after failing miserably, Maryland's Mike Locksley may be Nick Saban's best rehab project

COLLEGE PARK, Md. – At some point during the last month, Mike Locksley looked around. Players were in helmets and pads again. The calendar was moving ever more quickly toward kickoff. And Locksley finally understood:

“It’s a reality,” he says. “It’s a reality now.”

He is a head coach again, somehow. At the place he’d always dreamed it would happen, but could never have expected it to. Not quite eight years since he – and these are his words – “failed miserably” at New Mexico, Locksley improbably finds himself at Maryland, in charge of a Power Five program. And yeah, even to him, it’s still more than a little surprising.

“I always, in the back of my mind, wanted another opportunity,” he says. “I can’t tell you that I knew I would get the opportunity, but I held out hope that if I did a good job for wherever I was working, maybe this opportunity would come to fruition.”

Where he was working, of course, is a big part of this story. Three years at Alabama helped to erase much of the residue from that disastrous stint at New Mexico, where “failed miserably” is not hyperbole. Locksley’s tenure from 2008-11 was marred as much by issues off the field as a 2-26 record on it. 

Last week, sitting in his spacious office at the Gossett Team House, Locksley acknowledged another reality: He might be the ultimate illustration of rehabilitation by immersion in Nick Saban’s “Process.”

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For one reason or another, coaches hoping to rebound find their way to Tuscaloosa, where they’re given crimson polo shirts and essentially disappear inside the walls of the Alabama program. The windowless room where the analysts or interns (or whatever title they’re given) grind away is sometimes called “the submarine,” or else the “barber shop.” Some move up to Alabama’s coaching staff – after starting as an analyst in 2016, Locksley was the Crimson Tide’s offensive coordinator in 2018, when he led a record-setting attack and was named the Frank Broyles Award winner as the nation’s best assistant coach  – and move on to other jobs. 

“It’s like taking a sabbatical,” Locksley told reporters last January during the run-up to the College Football Playoff, “and going to study and become better.”

And while he describes what happened at New Mexico as “an outlier to who I am,” he also acknowledges having learned much, first from failure and then especially the last three years from Saban. And it’s entirely possible a 40-year-old first-time head coach simply didn’t have the tools to succeed anywhere, never mind at a program limited by NCAA penalties including scholarship reductions and other recruiting sanctions for violations committed on the previous staff’s watch.

“My toolbox probably consisted of a hammer and a screwdriver,” he says of New Mexico. “And here you’re trying to fix major things and you don’t have all the tools you need to fix it appropriately.”

Locksley’s first two teams went 1-11; he was fired after an 0-4 start in 2011. But his tenure also included allegations of age discrimination (later withdrawn) by an administrative assistant and a one-game suspension after Locksley allegedly punched an assistant coach when an argument escalated during a coaches’ meeting.

And now?

“I’m a big believer that you take more from failure than you do from success,” he says. “A lot of the issues I found problematic the first time around, I had answers for the second time around.”

Mostly, that remains to be seen. Locksley hasn’t yet coached a game as Maryland’s head coach. But his approach seems to have struck the right notes for a program in turmoil. The death in June 2018 of offensive lineman Jordan McNair after complications of heatstroke from an offseason workout  led to allegations of a systemically “toxic” culture under coach DJ Durkin, who was fired last October.

Locksley, who grew up in nearby Washington, D.C., was hired in large part because of his familiarity with the program and its home recruiting grounds – he spent five years on the Maryland staffs of Ron Vanderlinden and Ralph Friedgen, and from 2012-15 with Randy Edsall, then was Maryland’s interim coach for a half-season in 2015. He hired a staff filled with similar connections to Maryland. And when he arrived, he already had more than passing acquaintance with at least some members of the current roster.

But Locksley is bringing a lot of Alabama to Maryland. Back when Durkin was hired in 2015, Locksley could have remained on staff; instead he went to Alabama with a transparent goal: “To get under coach Saban and to be able to learn from him and get behind the walls of that place, because of the success they’d had.”

Locksley says he filled notebooks with nuggets gleaned from Saban, ideas on organizational and philosophical structure he has begun implementing at Maryland. Externally, a visitor might notice a change in how the Terps practice; they follow Saban’s innovative routine of essentially holding two side-by-side, simultaneous sessions in order to work more players. But it’s in Maryland’s organizational flow chart of titles and responsibilities – recruiting and player development – that the Terps under Locksley will attempt to most mimic the Tide.

“The three years I spent there was getting to understand the ‘why’ behind it,” Locksley says. “How it’s set up, why it’s set up that way, how does it function, how does it make us better?”

How did it make him better? Last January, Saban praised Locksley’s leadership qualities and rapport with players and said: “I think he’ll do really well.”

“Every head-coaching position is a little bit different in terms of who you can recruit, how you can recruit, what kind of support do you have in the program, and I think he’s got a challenging job ahead of him. But I think if anybody has a chance to be successful in that position, I think Mike is the guy that could do it.”

Referring to Saban and Alabama, Locksley likes to say “success leaves clues.” What does that New Mexico failure leave? How will his time at Alabama make Maryland better? As an improbable dream turns to reality, we’re about to find out.