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Rice Football Film Room 2020: UAB Review

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Rice Football wrapped up its shortened 2020 season with a home loss to UAB. This week’s film room digs into two key plays from that defeat.

Losing to UAB in frustrating fashion at home wasn’t the ideal end for this strange, abbreviated Rice football season. But I’ll say what I said both on The Roost Podcast and on Twitter: if you’d told me two weeks ago that Rice would split these last two games over Marshall and UAB, with one being a shutout win and the other a 5-point loss, and with Wiley Green playing more meaningful snaps than Mike Collins, I’d have taken it in a heartbeat.

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There’s no point, to me, in rehashing the plays that cost Rice the game. I still have full confidence in the future of this program (and belief in what this season would have been, minus a pandemic and some injuries), so let’s look at a few things that give us some optimism in the future, shall we?

Much of Rice’s fortunes for the immediate future will depend on whether or not Mike Collins returns for the 2021 season. But JoVoni Johnson is a factor at the quarterback position regardless, especially when you consider that the free pass of eligibility this year means he could play *four more years* at Rice, if both he and the program want him to.

Painting the corner

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Rice Football Film Room 2020: Marshall Review

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Rice Football shocked Marshall last Saturday, shutting out the Herd in their own house. We take a look at how it happened in this week’s film room.

HOW ‘BOUT THEM OWLS, Y’ALL? I hope you’re all still riding as high as I am after a potential program-defining win for this team and coaching staff. With apologies to my hometown Blazers, I’m devoting this week’s Rice Football Film Room to the Marshall win; for more on UAB, go check Matt and Taylor McHargue on Inside the Hedges tonight or tune into The Roost Podcast on Thursday.

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With Saturday’s win fueled by—surprise!—a dominant performance by the defense, we’ll focus on that side of the ball.

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Rice Football Film Room 2020: Marshall Preview

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Following a third cancelation, Rice football returns to the field to face a stout Marshall squad. How big is the task at hand? We discuss in this week’s film room.

Well, at this point I’m running out of pithy things to say about postponements and cancellations. This stinks! Three very winnable games gone from Rice’s schedule, all in the division, and a rescheduled one this Saturday in Huntington against a juggernaut of a Marshall team.

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I won’t sugarcoat this for y’all. Marshall is very, very, very good. Both of ESPN’s analytical power ranking systems (FPI and Bill Connelly’s SP+) have them as one of the top 25 teams in all of FBS. They’re led on both sides of the ball by ferocious lines: an OL with every spot manned by a senior and a defensive front that’s put up 41 tackles for loss and 22 sacks in seven games. Rice is going to have to play damn near perfect to pull this one off.

Redshirt freshman quarterback Grant Wells has been stellar for the Herd so far, but the heart and soul of their offense is junior running back Brenden Knox. He’s not the most explosive back (5.0 YPC, and his longest run this year is the 45-yarder we’ll see below), but he’s tough, agile, and has great vision.

Knox can make you pay

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Rice Football Film Room 2020: North Texas Review, UTEP Preview

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What went wrong for Rice football against North Texas and how do the Owls fix it before they play UTEP? Find out in this week’s film room.

Well, that was no fun. Matt and I talked about it on The Roost Podcast this week, but a loss like that is a lot harder to swallow when you have real expectations, as we have for this Rice team this season. Hopefully they can clean the issues up and get a decisive victory over a UTEP team they’re rightfully favored against this weekend.

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I thought for a while about which play to pick for the North Texas game. It seems the offense would be a natural pick, since that was the side that fared worse. But after watching that game, the recipe for improvement for the offense, to me, is just: block better and stop fumbling. So let’s go with a play from the defense, which generally played well, but gave up a couple key plays, including this one.

The Bean Run

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Rice Football Film Room 2020: North Texas Preview

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Quarterback Jason Bean and the North Texas offense are the focal points in this week’s edition of the Rice football film room.

Last week felt like a bit of a Groundhog Day situation, didn’t it? At least we didn’t get all the way to Friday before losing the game this time, but it’s still no fun to have lost the chance to see this Rice team prove itself on the field for the second week in a row.

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On the bright side, at least we’re not in the same boat as North Texas fans. After a shootout win against MTSU on October 17th—the week before Rice’s season opener against the Blue Raiders—off weeks combined with a spate of cancellations and postponements have kept the Mean Green from playing for more than a month. So despite the late start and the loss of their last two games, Rice has still played two games since UNT played its most recent one. 2020, y’all!

Like a lot of teams in C-USA this year, the 2020 iteration of the Mean Green is an all-offense, no-defense squad (e.g., they’re 62nd in offensive SP+ and 117th in defensive SP+). Also like a lot of teams in C-USA this year, they’ve had a bit of a revolving door situation at QB. Jason Bean started their opener against Houston Baptist, was promptly replaced by Austin Aune, and then took back over during the MTSU game and led them to their comeback victory. It looks like we’ll see Bean as the starter on Saturday, so this edition of the Film Room will focus on him as the probable signal-caller.

More: Rice Football vs North Texas Game Preview

Regardless of who’s at QB, the Mean Green offense will revolve primarily around star senior receiver (and Houston native!) Jaelon Darden. Despite an unassuming 5-foot-9, 174-pound build, Darden has put up serious numbers this year. While the Mean Green have played only five games, Darden is in the top ten in the country in receiving yards and leads all of FBS with a whopping 10 receiving TDs. He single-handedly accounts for 40.7% of the team’s total receiving yards and 43% of their total receptions.

One, if by air

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