ORONO — We learned volumes about the University of Maine football team on this Thursday night hot enough to leave pools of eye-black on your cleats.
Lewiston’s Jared Turcotte started the season hungry, healthy and knocking the taste out of everyone’s mouth if they weren’t wearing a blue helmet.
Better pray to the gridiron gods that he stays that away, and that the reason for his early departure on a golf cart was merely a mild case of heat exhaustion.
Watching Turcotte pound the rock and punish potential tacklers was every nickel of the redeeming value in Maine’s season opener against Albany at Morse Field.
That’s because we also discovered, with the help of decades-old football logic behind us, that having two estimably equal quarterbacks at the top of your depth chart is akin to having minus-one.
Especially when they’re given Arena League time to throw.
And when the sweaty handful of aerials they place precisely between the numbers rattle off shoulder pads or through slippery fingertips.
Warren Smith, to be charitable, was shaky. Chris Treister was given a puncher’s chance and couldn’t land a grazing right cross, never mind a haymaker.
Turnovers were running stride for stride with first downs until late in the third quarter, and the Black Bears dropped a dog of a season opener, 3-0, to the Great Danes.
That bottom line conveyed the cruelest lesson of all: Barring an autumn overflowing with miracles, Maine is a 99-yard Hail Mary away from contention in the Football Championship Subdivision’s toughest league.
Twenty-two months after his last previous competitive carry, Turcotte slowly gained momentum and gave Maine’s flagging offense every ampere of its energy.
He rushed 18 times for 90 yards and caught two passes for 17 more.
On a night when the Black Bears sputtered to 11 first downs, Turcotte was responsible for most of them.
Free from the constraints of a sports hernia that twice sent him to a surgeon’s table and erased his sophomore year, the 6-foot-2, 230-pound tank made numerous Albany tacklers miss.
Others wished they had. Chief among them: A Great Danes safety who wandered away from the scene of the attack in a stupor and then stumbled his way back to the secondary with a hand covering each ear hole after one facemask-to-facemask encounter.
But with precious time dissolving and Maine unable to convert on obvious passing downs to save its life, Turcotte was reduced to a dull roar on Albany’s side of midfield.
Maine never nudged past Albany’s 30-yard line all night. In fact, that invisible wall is where any Black Bears prayer of salvaging the party met the busy signal to heaven with 5:57 remaining.
Turcotte was smothered by a pair of Albany defenders as he fought for yardage along the left sideline on a peculiar third-and-9 call.
He didn’t immediately get up, then was assisted by two Maine turnovers to a table adjacent to the bench. Turcotte slammed his fist to the table and placed a wet towel over his head while the medical staff taped ice to his lower back.
Two sets of arms provided assistance, again, this time to a golf cart. Turcotte sat down heavily and was whisked away.
Treister’s pass on the ensuing fourth down play fell incomplete, effectively condemning Maine to a second straight daunting debut.
Maine salvaged an overtime win over Division II St. Cloud State in this spot a year ago. That night the offense and special teams were ahead of the defense. The Black Bears’ playmakers did enough to prompt the occasional fit of crowd noise.
Fast forward a year, and the only sound for a mile radius was the result of more than 7,500 overheated, under-stimulated spectators fanning themselves with programs.
The Black Bears’ quarterback derby ostensibly ended earlier this week, when Jack Cosgrove named Smith the starter over fellow junior Treister, the Portland High School graduate.
Neither opened last season as the starter. Both moved the team with a flourish when given their opportunity. Having each in camp with game experience in tow was viewed as a strength.
Perhaps it was a liability, because the battle rages on after a night when Maine’s offense looked scared of its own shadow.
Smith was 5-for-13 with an interception in the first half before yielding to Treister, who wound only a hair better at 7-for-17.
Together, they passed for only 112 yards and exhibited equal cases of happy feet behind an offensive line that starts three sophomores. Overthrows, underthrows and drops outnumbered double-digit gains.
Maine’s defense was its usual ball-hawking, gang-tackling self, forcing three fumbles and recovering two. Albany didn’t go all Boise State, to be sure, mustering only 250 yards, itself.
For the second straight year, though, Maine of the Colonial Athletic Association lost to a foe armed with fewer scholarships and from the perceived lesser Northeast Conference.
Last September, Albany rallied at home to erase a 16-0 halftime deficit and beat the Bears 20-16. Turcotte, as he did for every other game, watched as a spectator. Smith was still sharing snaps at QB with Mike Brusko. Treister was third string.
We can’t know everything about this year’s version of the Black Bears, but we know this much: At home, with Maine’s star back on the field, with depth under center, this one felt a thousand times worse.
Kalle Oakes is a staff columnist. His email is koakes@sunjournal.com.
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