Anthony McFarland crouched next to Maryland quarterback Max Bortenschlager for a split second before he twitched into motion and, in a blink, went from the backfield to the slot.

The result of the play was a forgettable five-yard catch for the redshirt freshman running back, as McFarland darted to his left, caught the ball from Bortenschlager and scampered out of bounds in the first half of Maryland’s annual spring game on Saturday in College Park. But it was a hint of how Maryland plans to use its running backs next season, with McFarland lining up where a receiver normally would and flashing his and the group’s versatility.

“Being able to rotate a lot of guys and having all the running backs being able to play different positions that aren’t necessarily your running back position, really just helps our offense,” said junior running back Jake Funk, who ran for two touchdowns Saturday. “We get our playmakers on the field and we do what we do.”

With a small crowd dotting Maryland Stadium’s lower bowl, including a big group of recruiting targets, the spring game provided a first glimpse of a Terrapins team coming off a 4-8 season and missing its top two quarterbacks, who are both recovering from torn right anterior cruciate ligaments. It also offered insight, however measured by the absence of quarterbacks Kasim Hill and Tyrrell Pigrome, into the system being installed by new offensive coordinator Matt Canada.

The first offense faced the second defense, the second offense then faced the first defense, and the scoreboard showed a 31-3 win for the white team at afternoon’s end, though it wasn’t always clear how those numbers were added up.

Bundled into all that was the fans’ first peek at McFarland, who missed last season while recovering from a broken leg suffered in high school. The 5-foot-8 running back, who was a four-star prospect coming out of nearby DeMatha Catholic High, was the top-rated recruit in the Terrapins’ 2017 class. Now he looks to boost an offense that ranked 11th out of 14 teams in the Big Ten in scoring last season, and round out a deep running backs group headed by senior Ty Johnson.

“He’s got such big-play capability,” Maryland Coach DJ Durkin said of McFarland Saturday. “He’s finally healthy and in shape, and he is who we all know he is.”

An open intrasquad scrimmage in April, with the quarterbacks untouchable and only certain parts of the playbook shown, did not give too much indication of how Canada’s offense will look come fall. But Canada is promising to be creative with his running backs, whether that be with frequent pre-snap motion, jet sweeps (which there were a lot of Saturday), splitting them out of the backfield, or having two or three on the field at the same time. 

McFarland is used to shifting all over the field. When he first got to DeMatha as a freshman, the Stags had three future Division I running backs in current Maryland junior Lorenzo Harrison III, Wisconsin’s Taiwan Deal and Penn State’s Mark Allen. DeMatha Coach Elijah Brooks remembers wanting to utilize McFarland, then a 14-year-old brimming with speed and shiftiness, but having few carries to offer. So Brooks got McFarland the ball in other ways: in the return game, as the second running back on the field, or as a slot receiver who created mismatches against linebackers.

Now Canada, starting his seventh offensive coordinator job since 2007, has a chance to utilize McFarland the same way. Maryland ranked eighth in the Big Ten in rushing yards per game last season while playing most of its schedule without Pigrome or Hill. Johnson, after rushing for 1,004 yards as a sophomore, ran for a team-high 875 and 6.4 yards per carry in the fall.

“When Matt Canada came and kind of showed us how we’re going to use our backs, I was a little happy about it,” McFarland said Thursday. “Showing us off and not playing one back [at a time], having three backs on the field at the same time. It’s a pretty good deal and I’m excited about the offense.”

McFarland, who chose Maryland over Alabama and Georgia as a junior in high school, admitted Thursday that his injury and ensuing rehab was a “depressing time” for him. But that’s pushed into the past now, and any wear on his body — the rip on the back of his practice jersey, a few scrapes on his arms, the gray smudges on his shiny black cleats — are from dashing by teammates during spring ball.

Junior defensive lineman Adam McLean likened McFarland to Derrius Guice, an NFL-bound running back from LSU, because of McFarland’s ability to burst into space and make defenders miss. He showcased those skills in the third quarter Saturday, when he squeezed through a hole in the right side of the line, shed a tackler off his back and cut across the entire field on his way to a 39-yard run. It was the offense’s most explosive play of the day, and that could reverberate into Maryland’s future in more than one way.

“If he does what he can do, he is the type of talent who could get top local talent really excited about that program,” Brooks, DeMatha’s coach, said. “Kids are going to take a harder look at Maryland because of Anthony McFarland.”

More college sports coverage: