Mike Locksley enters the 2019 season 3-31 as a head coach. Locksley is getting another chance to prove himself as a head coach and this time around he’s switching things up. The Terrapins are going to learn what it’s like to practice like the Alabama Crimson Tide.

“This is the practice plan, almost to a T, that we used at Alabama,” Locksley said during a recent interview with the Big Ten Network (video below). “I thought it was a really good plan because it allowed you to develop your whole team.”

So many former head coaches have landed at Alabama to be “rehabilitated” that it has become a meme of sorts. Any time a prominent college football head coach is fired, you can find tweets about him heading to Alabama to learn from Nick Saban for a few seasons.

Locksley arrived at Alabama in the spring of 2016, taking an offensive analyst position. It was his first job after being Maryland’s interim coach in 2015 (he went 1-5). At the time, Maryland chose to go with D.J. Durkin as its next head coach, a hire that did not work out (to put it mildly).

Now Locksley is the one replacing Durkin (as full-time head coach, Maryland again decided against hiring the interim head coach). Alabama fans are well aware that Saban believes games are “won” before they’re played (building stamina and endurance in offseason workouts, preparing properly in practice). It will be interesting to see if Locksley conducting Alabama-style practices leads to a better record as a head coach.