COLLEGE PARK — As true freshmen in 2012, Perry Hills and Caleb Rowe found themselves in a sudden competition to become Maryland's starting quarterback two weeks before the season opener.
When C.J. Brown, then a redshirt junior, suffered a season-ending knee injury one August morning, second-year coach Randy Edsall had to choose between Hills' head and Rowe's arm.
The head won out, and Hills, who gained more acclaim in high school outside of Pittsburgh as a wrestler than a quarterback, led the Terps to four wins in the seven games he started before he, too, tore an anterior cruciate ligament
"The best memory would probably be the Temple game, just coming off beating William & Mary 7-6 [in the season opener] and then going into Temple, throwing a couple of touchdowns, running for a touchdown," Hills recalled Saturday. "That was a big upside for me and I'll remember that."
Hills went 11 of 21 for 190 yards with three touchdowns and one rushing touchdown in a 36-27 road win over the Owls. He was even better at West Virginia a couple of weeks later, completing 20 of 29 passes for 305 yards and three touchdowns in a 31-21 loss to the Mountaineers.
"That's when everything really slowed down for me," he said.
In choosing Brown's successor after his career ended last season, Edsall opted for Rowe's right arm — and the threat of throwing long touchdown passes to a new group of fast receivers — over whatever Hills and sophomore Shane Cockerille (Gilman) have to offer.
Even though Rowe missed the entire spring recovering from a second torn ACL, suffered four games into last season, Edsall anointed the 6-foot-2, 205-pound rising redshirt junior from Landrum, S.C., as the starter for 2015.
For his part, Hills is hoping to do this summer what he did as a freshman, with the same grit and determination he showed then. The 6-3, 205-pounder, who will also be a redshirt junior in the fall, believes he can win the starting job when the Terps return for preseason camp.
"You have to go in with the mindset that you're going to change [the order on the depth chart]," Hills said after leading his team to a 21-16 win in Saturday's Red-White spring game, completing 12 of 24 passes for 212 yards and three touchdowns — all of them in the first half to senior Marcus Leak — at Byrd Stadium.
"If you don't, you're just going to lay back and let someone have the job that you want. You have to go into it saying, 'I'm going to work my butt off and try to take this guy's job.'"
Asked if his performance in the first half Saturday might have given Edsall and offensive coordinator Mike Locksley more confidence in him, Hills said, "I hope so. You just have to watch the film, just get things corrected that I did do wrong, get back for the summer and get ready for camp."
Edsall apparently doesn't think too much can be put into what Hills did in the first half Saturday, seeing more of the inconsistencies in Hills' passing and decision-making that resurfaced in the second half as well as the 14 practices that preceded the spring game. One was overthrowing a wide-open Leak for what could have been a fourth touchdown pass.
"The whole thing is, you've got to take a look at the whole body of work, when you're doing anything, whether it's a [regular-season] game or it's the spring [game]," Edsall said Saturday. "Here in the second half there were times where he had the ball and was very inconsistent and you don't expect a guy that's had that experience and had those opportunities that he's had to be as inconsistent as he was."
Not all of the consistency issue can be totally put on Hills, considering that he has rarely had a chance to work with the first-team offense since his freshman year. Even Saturday, Hills was running second-team, though he did face the second-team defense.
"The offense is like a running clock, everyone has to do their piece," Hills said Saturday. "If one piece isn't working, the clock's not going to work. It is harder to correct inconsistencies [if the offense breaks down], but it's going to come down to being mentally focused and knowing what to do on every single play,"
In some ways, it is a much different situation for Hills now than it was in 2012.
Then, it was a matter of learning the playbook as quickly as he could after Brown went down during a non-contact drill in practice.
Though Rowe was always considered to have the best arm of anyone in camp, Hills seemed a more natural leader and because of his wrestling background, more capable of taking a beating playing behind a porous offensive line.
Much of it is in the preparation.
"Now I know the playbook like the back of my hand, that's the biggest part of the game," Hills. "Everybody's big and fast and strong out here, it just comes down to who can execute their playbook the best."
If anything, Hills has been better statistically than Rowe.
In seven starts as a freshman, Hills completed 97 of 169 passes (57.4 percent) for 1,336 yards with eight touchdowns and seven interceptions while being sacked a whopping 24 times. After redshirting as a sophomore, Hills got into only one game last season, coming in when Brown was knocked out against Iowa on Homecoming. Hills completed five of 10 passes for 86 yards and a touchdown in a 38-31 win.
In 14 career appearances, Rowe has completed 123 of 229 passes (53.7) for 1,768 yards while throwing 12 touchown passes and 10 interceptions. He has been sacked six times.
As a redshirt freshman in 2013, Rowe showed his promise — and his strong right arm — by completing 18 of 32 passes for 332 yards and a touchdown in a 27-26 win over Virginia, subbing for a concussed Brown. The next week, after Wake Forest knocked Brown out of the game, Rowe was 12 of 27 for 207 yards, including a 56-yard touchdown pass to Levern Jacobs.
Memories of those performances likely played a big part in Edsall's decision.
Hills doesn't think there's any irony to be found in the fact that he now has to beat out Rowe for a second time despite the fact that, at least on the surface, he has done more as a starter when given the chance.
"I wouldn't say it's an irony, me and Caleb are friends, we hang out all the time," Hills said. "He's a great player. He really is. He's a great football player, he's smart, he has a cannon of an arm. I can't really worry about Caleb and what he's done. I've got to worry about how I can get better and I can challenge him."
Asked if he thinks he is better prepared to handle the No. 1 job than he was as a freshman, Hills reverts to his days as a wrestler who didn't think he could lose.
"I'm a competitor," he said. "Whether it was back then, now, I'm always going to prepare the best to help this team win. I don't want to be that guy that lets this team down and lets us lose.
"I take that stuff very personally. Back then I was watching film until 1 a.m. Now I'm going to do the same thing, but it's going to be a little easier because everything has slowed down."