Quarterback Gael Ochoa tallied 339 all-purpose yards and five touchdowns, yet Rice Football (1-7) couldn’t get the stops to beat FAU.
Rice Football head coach Scott Abell opened his postgame press conference with an incomplete but telling thought. “The plays that were left out there,” he mused, recalling in his mind all the opportunities the Owls had to steal a road win. None of them came to pass, leaving the head man in a familiar, unenjoyable position, forced to pick up the pieces and move forward in a season gone awry. Here are a few immediate reactions from the game:
Gael Woah-choa
There were concerns regarding the health of starting quarterback Jacurri Brown, who was forced from the Tulsa game multiple times with injuries. It became clear during the week that the purposeful insertion of Gael Ochoa into that contest as a change-of-pace option for Brown would give the Owls’ backup quarterback some meaningful reps before a larger burden was placed on his shoulders.
If Ochoa had any nerves, he didn’t show it. He opened the scoring with a 55-yard touchdown run on the Owls’ third play from scrimmage. On the next drive, he burst through the line for a 52-yard score. Then, with Rice football behind and struggling in the second quarter, he delivered this 74-yard scoring scamper.
Ochoa went into halftime with 191 rushing yards to his name. That alone was the third-most a Rice player had accounted for on the ground in a single game since 2005. He got within yards of the program record on a 69-yard touchdown run in the third quarter, but ultimately came up just short of Dicky Maegel’s legendary 1954 Cotton Bowl game against Alabama. Maegel went for 265 yards in that one. Ochoa had to settle for 259 against FAU.
Altogether, Ochoa and Patrick Crayton, who was brilliant in a relief effort on his own touchdown drive as Ochoa was treated for a cramp midway through the third quarter, combined to lead a 608-yard, 49-point offensive effort. The 499 total rushing yards the Owls amassed were the most yardage allowed by FAU in program history. Unfortunately, it wouldn’t be enough.
Even when accounting for the porousness of the FAU defense, the offense has clearly worked itself out of any funk it found itself in midseason. Beyond the breakaway rushing touchdowns, Rice added a 71-yard strike through the air from Ochoa to Braylen Walker and moved the ball effectively on other base downs. Mistakes rendered those efforts somewhat hollow in a losing effort.
Seeking Momentum
Abell’s opening remarks in his weekly media availability before the FAU game were centered on momentum. “We’ve got to find those moments in the game that give us some breathing room to help us keep that momentum,” he implored.
Sure enough, Rice football found itself in such a situation on Saturday against FAU. Ahead 14-0, Rice went for the jugular with a play-action shot to tight end Preston Zinter on third and one. The ball sailed just over his fingertips for an incomplete pass. Like Brown before him, Ochoa had just missed on a potentially game-changing play through the air.
Rice converted the fourth down fairly easily. Then danger struck. Ochoa was late on a first down pitch, tossing it to D’Andre Hardeman with little space and the defense closing in. The ball hit the ground. FAU recovered. Then they scored on a 30-yard pass from Veltkamp, a quarterback too dangerous to be handed a short field.
The slide didn’t stop there. FAU crept closer on the ensuing possession, tacking on two points with a safety on a blocked punt, which gave their offense another possession. Veltkamp drove them down the field on an 11-play, 75 yard drive that ended in the endzone.
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With three minutes to play in the first quarter, Rice had the ball in FAU territory with a 14 point lead, threatening to extend it. Not long after, FAU scored 16 unanswered points in the span of six minutes and 23 seconds and a tremendous opening push was eviscerated in a three-phase failure.
First, the offense fumbled the ball. Next, special teams had the punt blocked. Finally, the defense squandered a stop, committing two penalties on a third and 14. Tack on an aggressive fourth and one decision that backfired on Abell and FAU would rattle off 23 straight points before Rice got up from the mat and tried to punch back. Remove those gaffes, Rice wins this game.
Defense Gets Blitzed, Special Teams Whiffs
Ochoa’s theatrics were critical in part because he and the Rice football offense did not get much support from the defensive side of the ball. After opening the game with two stops, the Rice defense allowed FAU to score touchdowns on six of their next seven possessions. The lone stop in between was Kyren Condoll’s redzone interception, which Veltkamp appeared to toss up because he believed a Rice lineman had jumped offside.
Florida Atlantic is an offense-first team near the top of the league in most statistical categories on that side of the ball. Even still, they averaged 35 points per game and had yet to score more than 34 points against an FBS opponent this year. They had 44 points before the end of the third quarter against a Rice defense that was clearly gassed.
“We’ve gotta get better,” Abell said. “We gotta get some stops.”
The upside-down nature of the game played a large role in that exhaustion. The ball-control offense Rice wants to play evaporated when their quarterback found a way to score on just about every carry he had from scrimmage. Turn some of those two minute drives — Rice had FIVE scoring drives of less than 90 seconds in this game — into four minute drives, and the defense might have actually gotten to sit down when they reached the sideline.
However, scoring too fast shouldn’t be held against Abell’s offense. After all, that is their job. Another game of defensive regression has to raise concerns. Some of it is execution based. Allowing 51 points doesn’t often happen without some missed assignments and/or missed tackles. But the losing proposition this unit is fighting is getting harder to ignore.
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“We struggled today when our depth had to go in, to be honest,” Abell said. “We struggled defensively when we had to give our guys blows and we had to go into the depth chart.”
There was a sequence to open the third quarter where Rice subbed off the starting defensive line — which is already missing Chibby Nwajuaku and Dillan Botts — on second and 10. The backups came in and promptly allowed a 19-yard carry straight up the middle on the next play. What do you do when you’re already down to your 2s who can’t play 81 snaps a game, the number FAU ran on Saturday?
Add in nine points at the hands of a punt return touchdown and a blocked punt out of the back of the endzone, which resulted in a safety and you’ve got enough negative momentum to overcome a banner day for Abell’s offense, which was playing down several key pieces itself.
On the fateful missed field goal late, Abell spoke of how tired the Owls’ offense was in that moment and how hard the yards had become. “I felt really strong that was our best shot,” Abell said of Tommy Bauchiero’s 55-yard try. “Do it all over again, I wouldn’t switch [the decision].”
Bidding a Bowl Goodbye
Barring an exception via Academic Progress Rate, Rice football will not be going bowling this season. That’s a sour pill to swallow for a year that began with so much promise. And no matter how understandable that reality can become given the near misses and the abundant injuries, it’s going to sting.
On paper, the 2026 Rice Football team is no better than the 2025 squad, despite mounting evidence to the contrary. Football is a wins business. By virtue of the Owls’ upcoming bye week, Rice is guaranteed to go a full calendar year without a win over an FBS opponent. Their last came on November 8, 2025 against UAB. Their next game is November 7, 2026 at North Texas.
“I told them to reflect on the way home. I want us to have a short memory, but I want a lot of reflection on that flight home,” Abell said. “And when we land, short memory, they need to move on and then, as we get back into work next week, the bye week will serve as a purpose for us to get healthy and then to maybe build that depth and try to now finish this year with our best foot forward.”
Could that best foot involve more players like Ochoa who have eligibility remaining for 2027 and beyond? After his showing on Saturday it’ll be hard to take him off the field, making for an interesting bye week decision for the Owls to make over these next two weeks.
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