It has become a ritual for freshman quarterback Malik Washington to end his press conferences with a Bible verse. On Saturday — after Maryland football took a 55-10 licking from No. 2 Indiana at home — his thoughts turned to the trials of Job.

The story is well known: As a result of a wager between God and Satan, a faithful man is inflicted with poverty, disease and loss. Through all manner of the world’s ills, he retains his faith.

“The story of Job is going to be on my mind this week as we move forward,” Washington said.

With all respect to Washington, I disagree with the parallel he painted between the story of Job and the four-game losing streak of the Terps football team.

Job never understood why he was being tested. But, when Washington committed to Maryland, these were the hardships he signed up for.

The Terps have been nothing if not consistently mediocre for two decades now. The program’s last double-digit-win season was 2003. It has never had more than 10 losses in that span, but it has never risen to anything approaching contender status. Every so often, Maryland goes to a bowl game that changes its sponsorship name every few years — never one that retains its prestige in college football’s ever-changing format.

There are special players who come through the program — Vernon Davis, Torrey Smith, Stefon Diggs, D.J. Moore — but there are never special seasons.

It’s OK for Washington (who won three MIAA titles at Archbishop Spalding) to want more than this. It’s OK for the Terps football team to want more than this.

It’s OK for Terps fans — who very nearly filled SECU Stadium for the announced sellout on Saturday afternoon — to want more than an endless spin cycle of averageness.

But it’s never going to happen while Mike Locksley is the head coach. If the Terps truly want more, it’s time to seriously consider moving on from him.

The Terps came off a bye week Saturday, but as soon as they stepped on the field, they never had a chance against the Hoosiers — a program that has achieved upward mobility in the cutthroat Big Ten Conference.

Two seasons ago, Indiana was 3-9, and the Terps pounded them by 27 points. But now, with Curt Cignetti, a coach who was revamping James Madison just a few hours south of Terps country a few years back, Indiana is every bit worthy of the No. 2 ranking.

The Hoosiers run game — powered in part by former Terp Roman Hemby — steamrolled the home team. On the other side, Maryland had just 37 yards on the ground, which backup IU QB Alberto Mendoza eclipsed all by himself in garbage time with one 53-yard scramble. The most backbreaking sequence involved back-to-back Maryland fumbles, one which Indiana returned for a 32-yard touchdown, then another which quickly became a Hemby score.

In just 2:06 of game time in that pivotal third quarter, a 10-point margin ballooned to 31. The difference between an upward-marching program like Indiana and a Maryland one eternally stuck in the doldrums has never been starker.

OK, so it was a bleak game. But the season’s nadir should scream for evaluating the bigger picture.

For one thing, it was Maryland’s fourth straight loss, and the previous three (all of which the Terps led in the fourth quarter) were winnable. The Terps should probably already be bowl-eligible, but holding late-game leads — a hang-up throughout Locksley’s tenure — will keep Maryland on edge in the postseason chase.

But, OK, Locksley has led Maryland to bowl games before, three straight from 2021-23, when he had his chosen QB in place. But here are some things the Terps have never done under Locksley: appeared in a College Football Playoff ranking, won a game out of a bye week or beaten a ranked Big Ten opponent.

Not one time.

In the zoomed-in view, the Terps have a young team that they’ve tried to grow organically rather than paying big bucks through the transfer portal. You can give Locksley credit for convincing talented players such as Washington and Sidney Stewart to stay home, and there were always going to be struggling parts to this season.

“These players will play hard for me,” Locksley said. “I coach them hard, and I’ll hang in with them. I’ve done that work.”

But, in the macro, the Terps are stuck on the same hamster wheel, being pulverized by the Ohio States and Michigans while fighting over the scraps with the have-nots in the conference. It should be at least a little distressing that the Locksley-led program is being leapfrogged by Indiana — which had a similar stretch of mediocrity going even further back than Maryland’s.

One of the first steps in Indiana’s ascent was firing coach Tom Allen, who like Locksley merely kept his team treading water.

This is not to diminish what Locksley has accomplished. Maryland was in a terrible place when he took the job, and it has at least had winning seasons. But expecting the 55-year-old coach to make a sudden climb from the conference’s middling tier after Year 7 when he’s never even managed a winning Big Ten record is wishful thinking.

Coaching is hardly the only thing holding Maryland back. The Terps are competing against college football’s rich elite with a comparatively dime-store budget, and not much is going to improve unless donors mount a serious offensive (probably starting with Locksley’s reported $13 million buyout).

When filling your stadium is a challenge — with an admitted bravo to new AD Jim Smith for finding ways to boost previously moribund attendance week after week — whipping up the enthusiasm to get people to dive further into their checkbooks is going to take miracles. Loyalty to a coach Smith didn’t hire is unlikely to start the cash flow.

But, no, these are not trials. This is not the football gods frowning on College Park and smiting the Terps, keeping them from the success they dream of. This is not a test of faith — this is just what Maryland football is and has been for years now.

Raising the bar for a football program is a choice, an expensive and difficult one. The Terps can choose to keep Locksley and keep their expectations firmly within the Big Ten’s forgettable middle. It’s low risk, and considering the money-burning maw that college football has become, it’s perhaps even a morally defensible choice to stick with a guy who lifted the program to modest achievements.

But aiming upward would mean making big changes — starting with changing the coach who is never going to lead Maryland any higher than he already has.