Inches separated Maryland from walking off into the sun.

It was the penultimate game of the 2018 season as a reeling Terps squad took on then-No. 10 Ohio State in College Park. Maryland, coming off consecutive losses, shouldn’t have been able to hang with a roaring Buckeyes attack powered by Dwayne Haskins and J.K. Dobbins.

But, one quarter into senior day, the Terps led 17-3 behind a pair of 70-plus-yard Anthony McFarland touchdown runs. They regained that 14-point cushion early in the third quarter with a pick six against Haskins. Regulation ended with the sides deadlocked at 45. The Buckeyes started overtime with a touchdown but, once again, the Terps responded.

McFarland ran for 24 yards to put Maryland at the 1, where Tayon Fleet-Davis punched it in. Sensing the chance for a historic upset — the Buckeyes had won each of the previous four matchups by at least 21 points — interim head coach Matt Canada went for the win.

Here’s where the storybook ending fell apart. Quarterback Tyrrell Pigrome rolled right and found Jeshaun Jones open for what would’ve been the game-winning two-point conversion, but his pass sailed out of reach of the receiver. Jones laid face-down on his home turf, his hands over his head in disbelief at a chance missed.

“Just being one pass away from a historic moment, that game was just a special one obviously, you know, would have been a lot more special if we had been on the winning side of things,” linebacker Tre Watson Sr., who led the Big Ten in tackles that year and was first-team all-conference, said. “That’s one of those ... get carried off, fans and students rush the field moments.

“But it just wasn’t meant to be for us that time around.”

Maryland lost to Penn State by 35 the next week, leaving it one win short of bowl eligibility. Canada, who’d been promoted from offensive coordinator, took over after the fallout from Jordan McNair’s death during summer workouts eventually led to D.J. Durkin’s firing.

Canada, now the offensive coordinator for the Steelers, interviewed for the Terps’ top job after the season. He didn’t get it — athletic director Damon Evans hired Alabama offensive coordinator and former Maryland assistant Michael Locksley instead.

“I never thought I was going to get that job,” Canada told Sports Illustrated in 2019. “I think they made a great decision. Locks is from the area. He wanted the job. It’s what I thought would happen. They wanted a fresh start and all that.”

But what if Pigrome’s pass had been on target? What if the Terps had pulled off an improbable upset and went to a bowl game under Canada, who then would’ve been the coach who rallied a program in disarray to respectability? Would Evans have removed his interim tag — if so, where would a program experiencing its best season in nearly two decades be?

Pittsburgh did not make Canada available for an interview; Maryland did the same for Evans and Jones. The Ottawa Redblacks, Pigrome’s Canadian Football League team, did not respond to a request.

After that game, it was likely time to establish a new direction for the program, Watson said. McNair’s death uncovered reports of a toxic coaching culture at Maryland, and “there was a lot to wash away and get rid of.”

But the victory still would’ve changed things.

“If we win that game and we do get bowl eligible, that transition is just a little bit more smooth,” Watson said. “Everyone feels a little bit better about the state of the program.”

It wasn’t that Maryland didn’t have talented players, he said. The program just couldn’t produce and compete at the level the top squads in the Big Ten did. A win over one of those teams — Ohio State chief among them — would’ve assuaged some of those doubts.

“If we had been able to do that, maybe this whole process of getting to relevance and being considered one of the better teams in the Big Ten happens a little faster,” Watson said. “That’s just the nature of it. When you win games against top-10 teams on national television [the game was on ABC], everyone takes notice.

“That includes recruits, that includes their parents ... all of that just bodes well for the program and, no matter whether you lose by one or 50, unfortunately the loss is recognized as a loss. It doesn’t carry the same weight.”

Winning the game would’ve increased Canada’s chances of getting the head coaching job, Watson said. He had to take over just months after arriving on campus and led the program to a 3-1 start, including a memorable season-opening win against Texas.

It’s hard to say what the Terps look like right now if Canada was named head coach in 2018. He may not have kept the job this long — Durkin was fired after two seasons and his predecessor, Randy Edsall, was fired six games into his fifth year.

Canada had never been a college head coach. He’d been an offensive coordinator at six stops before Maryland — four lasted just one season. The Steelers currently rank 30th in offensive DVOA.

The Terps have had top-40 recruiting classes in each of the last four years, per 247Sports. That’s in part because of Locksley’s ties to the D.C./Maryland/Virginia area — the Ballou and Towson graduate was born and raised in Washington and grew up a Terps fan.

Canada doesn’t have those ties. It’s more than reasonable to think that his Maryland tenure wouldn’t have reached the same heights as Locksley’s — one already with back-to-back bowl wins and a third appearance certainly on the way.

But beating Ohio State remains an elusive target for Maryland. The 2018 matchup is the closest the Terps have gotten to upsetting the kings of their conference, and memories of it don’t just echo through the program’s fanbase — they roar.

Half a decade later, with another chance for an upset, perhaps Maryland will seize the chance at that immortality.

varun.shankar@contractors.thebaltimorebanner.com