A handpicked offensive weapon by the new staff, slot receiver Aaron Turner turned in a stellar season. He’s our 2025 Rice Football Offensive Newcomer of the Year.
From the moment he set foot on campus, slot receiver Aaron Turner bore the weight of tremendous expectations. The Cincinnati transfer was the brother of Rice staffer Eli Turner and had some familiarity with head coach Scott Abell and the style of offense the Owls wanted to run. He was starting from ground zero like the rest of the skill players, but his wealth of collegiate experience and athleticism made him an obvious candidate to become the Owls’ go-to guy.
During the spring, when Abell was coy to single out any individual by name as the team learned the offense, he was the exception.
“Aaron Turner seems to be making plays every day,” Abell declared, paving the way for the Owls’ new offensive weapon to lead the way in 2026.
More: 2025 Rice Football Season Superlatives
Sure enough, it was Turner who took a reverse 17 yards for the game-winning touchdown against Louisiana. The rushing score by a player listed as a “wide receiver” served as a beacon for what might be possible in this offense. Turner would break off another long scoring run against Prairie View A&M a few weeks later, two of his three rushing scores of the season as the Rice offense got its footing around him.
Lines blur between rushing and receiving in this offense, with pop passes that function like sweeps and reverses being awarded as receptions and receiving yards, even though the ball is hardly airborne for any material length of time. No matter how you slice it, though, Turner finished as the Owls’ leading receiver and had more scrimmage yards than any offensive player outside of workhorse running back Quinton Jackson.
Turner delivered career bests in receptions (63), rushing yards (259), total touchdowns (seven) and total scrimmage yards (657). Most of those came in the second half of the season as Turner seemingly willed the offense to stay in games against high-powered opponents.
“He was just a little bit of a different guy. He got comfortable,” inside receivers coach Austin Eisenhofer said of Turner’s growth during the year. “He wasn’t second-guessing things. He knew what he was doing was right. He knew he was better than the guys across from him, and he was going to get it done.”
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Turner’s most impactful moments came under the brightest lights. He led all Owls in scrimmage yards in the final two games of the regular season, going off for 136 yards and two touchdowns against North Texas and 119 yards against South Florida.
When Abell and his staff set out to recruit skill players to this offense moving forward, they’ll turn on Turner’s 2025 tape. He showed what could be possible while the scheme was still in its fledgling stages and the Owls would have been in a tough spot without his big plays to energize the offense.
** Photo credit: Maria Lysaker **
