After DJ Durkin arrived in College Park in December, the Maryland coach set out to meet individually with every player in his new program. There were plenty of questions to be asked for the first-time head coach trying to get to know his personnel, but one question was significant in trying to burrow into the psyche of players he had only game-planned against and never coached.
“So who are the leaders around here?” Durkin asked. “Who are the guys you look up to?”
The answer about 85 percent of the time, Durkin said at Big Ten Conference media days in Chicago last month, was linebacker Jermaine Carter Jr.