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The Roost Podcast | Ep 96 – Rice football to the AAC, UTSA recap, recruiting wins

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Rice football lost on the field this week, but reportedly picked up a major win off the gridiron with a potential move to the AAC. We break down the latest in realignment.

It wasn’t a good weekend for Rice football on the field. The Owls were run out of the Alamodome in decisive fashion despite two weeks to prepare for the game. What would have been a rather dour episode of The Roost Podcast turned elated when news broke that Rice was among a group of six schools expected to join the AAC in the near future. Carter and Matthew discuss the latest on the team, realignment and a couple of big wins on the recruiting front.

You can find previous episodes on the podcast page. For now, give a listen to Episode 96.

Episode Notes

  • Housekeeping
    • Don’t forget to rate, review and subscribe to the podcast on your platform of choice. Every little bit helps.
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  • The latest happenings in Rice football 
    • Putting the UTSA game in the rearview mirror as quickly as possible
    • What went wrong against the Roadrunners, and what needs to change?
    • Realignment: Rice reportedly moving up to the AAC
    • Realignment: What happens to the remainder of Conference USA?
    • Recruiting: Rice football picks up two big wins off the field in the ’22 class

Where can you find us?

Download and subscribe to The Roost Podcast on any of your favorite podcast providers. The show is available on iTunes, GooglePlay, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, TuneIn and PodBean. Please consider leaving a review wherever you listen.

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Rice Football 2021: NFL Owls Week 6 Stats Update

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Rice Football is well represented on 2021 NFL rosters. Here’s the latest from the NFL Owls in action in Week 6.

There are former Rice football players scattered across the NFL. Stay tuned each week for their game results and notables from each player.

Team NFL Owl(s) Week 6 Result Week 7
Los Angeles Chargers Christian Covington (DL) at Baltimore L, 34-6 — BYE —
Denver Calvin Anderson (OL)
Bryce Callahan (CB)		 vs Las Vegas L, 34-24 at Cleveland (TNF)
Pittsburgh Chris Boswell (PK) vs Seattle (SNF) W, 23-20 (OT) — BYE —
Detroit Jack Fox (P) vs Cincinnati L, 34-11 at Los Angeles Rams
Tampa Bay Nick Leverett (OL) at Philadelphia (TNF) W, 28-22 vs Chicago
Indianapolis Andrew Sendejo (Saf) vs Houston W, 31-3 at San Francisco (SNF)

Offense

Calvin Anderson – OT, Broncos

Anderson saw his first action of the season with the offense during the team’s Week 6 loss against the Raiders. He played 10 snaps, taking over for an injured Garett Bolles. Prior to this point, Anderson had only played on special teams.

Nick Leverett – OT, Buccaneers

Leverett remained inactive for the Bucs’ Week 6 game against the Philadelphia Eagles. He still awaits his first regular season snaps.

Defense

Bryce Callahan – CB, Broncos

Callahan matched his 2021 season high with three tackles on Sunday, adding a tackle for a loss and a quarterback hit. He’s now played at least 65% of the defensive snaps in five of the Broncos’ six games this season.

Christian Covington – DL, Chargers

Covington had four tackles in the teams’ Week 6 loss to the Baltimore Ravens. He’s had multiple tackles in every game so far this season.

Andrew Sendejo – S, Colts

Sendejo was inactive for the Colts’ Week 6 win over the Texans. He had played in the Colts’ previous three games up to that point after signing with the team after the start of the season.

Special Teams

Jack Fox – P, Lions

Fox continues to be one of the strongest contributors on the Lions, punting six times with an average of 55.5 yards per kick. He boomed a long of 64 yards and had only one touchback in his six attempts.

Chris Boswell – K, Steelers

Boswell came through in the clutch for the Steelers, yet again. He connected on a pair of extra points and all three of his field goals, including this game-winning kick to beat the Seahawks in overtime.

More Owls in the NFL

From practice squads to current free agents, there are other Owls on the cusp of returning to active rosters. Find more detail on current contractual agreements and former Rice football players waiting for their next opportunity here.

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Rice Football Recruiting: 2022 OL Miguel Cedeno commits to Owls

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The 2022 Rice Football recruiting class added a massive pickup in the offensive trenches, securing a commitment from offensive lineman Miguel Cedeno.

Just as the Owls were working through the bye week the 2022 Rice football recruiting class was working towards prolonging that success. Rice began its fall campaign with seven commitments in their upcoming class. They’ve now picked up numbers eight and nine, adding their second pledge of the week, this from American Heritage (FL) offensive lineman Miguel Cedeno.

Cedeno is the first offensive lineman in the Owls’ 2022 class. The 6-foot-7, 295-pound big man was initially offered by Rice on September 25 and made a visit to campus shortly after to see Rice take down Southern Miss. That proved to be all he needed to see, opting to shut his recruitment down a little more than a week later with these six finalists: Rice, West Virginia, Utah, Florida Atlantic, Tulane and Southern Miss.

The commitment from Cedeno gives Rice another head-to-head recruiting win over multiple Power 5 programs. It also keeps the pipeline to Florida open. Rice has signed at least one Floridian in every class since Mike Bloomgren took the helm of the program, now spanning five classes. Rice had no signees from Florida over the prior five years.

The fifth commitment on the offensive side of the ball, Cedeno will someday provide protection for quarterback commit AJ Padgett as well as wideouts Braylen Walker and Rawson MacNeill and running back Dean Connors.

Premium: Rice Football Recruiting Offer and Commitment Tracker

When you turn the tape on, it’s easy to see what the Owls saw when they made the decision to extend an offer to Cedeno. Not only does he win his one-on-one battles, he overpowers defenders in the trenches. Already a big human being, he has the chance to become even more threatening with a few years of work with strength and conditioning coach Hans Straub. He’s fairly fast on his feet for someone of that size, too. Altogether, this is a great pickup for Rice football.

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Conference USA Football 2021: Week 7 C-USA Roundup

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Conference USA Football was back in action this weekend. Here’s the latest from the teams on the gridiron in Week 7.

Team Week 7 Result Week 8
Charlotte — OFF —  — vs FAU (Thrs)
FAU — OFF —  — at Charlotte (Thrs)
FIU — OFF —  — vs WKU
LA Tech at UTEP L, 19-3 vs UTSA
Marshall at North Texas W, 49-21 — OFF —
MTSU — OFF —  — at UConn (Fri)
North Texas vs Marshall L, 49-21 vs Liberty
Old Dominion vs WKU L, 43-20 — OFF —
Rice at UTSA L, 45-0 at UAB
Southern Miss vs UAB L, 34-0 — OFF —
UAB at Southern Miss W, 34-0 vs Rice
UTEP vs Louisiana Tech W, 19-3 — OFF —
UTSA vs Rice W, 45-0 at Louisiana Tech
WKU at Old Dominion W, 43-20 at FIU

Notable Week 7 results – Standings

The cream of the crop

If we’ve learned anything from the first half of the season, we now know for certain that UTSA and UAB are the best of the West, and likely the top two teams in Conference USA. Not only did both teams find the win column this week; they blasted inferior opponents in an emphatic fashion. If you haven’t circled Nov. 20 yet, get it on your calendar. These two teams are going to put on quite a show.

Watch out for Western

Although they weren’t able to top UTSA the week prior, Western Kentucky looked quite capable on Saturday against Old Dominion. Bailey Zappe continues to be as good as advertised and Conference USA defenses don’t have any answers for the Hilltoppers’ signal-caller. This team is going to drop 40+ every game. The only way to top them is to outscore them, something that probably won’t be happening too often.

Miner Mania

UTEP was expected to be better this season, but even some of the Miners’ own supporters were skeptical of a bowl berth coming by the end of the year. Turns out, it only took seven weeks for UTEP to accomplish that feat. Not only will UTEP be bowling this offseason, they’ll enter their bye week deadlock atop Conference USA West with UTSA and UAB, all of which own 3-0 conference records.

Looking ahead – Key storylines

Intrigue in the East

If it’s not going to be Western Kentucky who emerges in the East, it might be one of Charlotte or FAU, who meet on the field next week following bye weeks for both programs. Each squad enters next week in the top half of C-USA in scoring defense and scoring offense. If they have hopes of winning their division, a win in this game would be a great place to start.

Mean Green Free Fall?

After winning their season opener against Northwestern State, North Texas has lost five consecutive games and only one of them was particularly close. The task won’t get any easier this week as they close out non-conference play against Liberty — who were upset by 32.5-point underdogs Louisiana Monroe on Saturday — but they need to show some sign of life after a rough month of play.

Tech in trouble?

Under head coach Skip Holtz, Louisiana Tech has been a perennial contender in Conference USA, and despite falling short of that elusive conference title, they’ve played in bowl games in each of the last seven seasons, winning six in a row prior to last year. Now sitting at 2-4 with UTSA on deck, the Bulldogs are in danger of getting uncomfortably close to missing that regular postseason trip they’ve become so accustomed to each winter.

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Rice Football: Mike Bloomgren reacts to UTSA loss

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Rice football head coach Mike Bloomgren met with the media following his teams’ discouraging loss to UTSA. Here are his words as he discusses the game.

We’re going to do this a little bit differently this week. Oftentimes, this is the space for a postgame featurette recapping the most recent game and delving into an aspect or two that proved important or consequential in some form. This week, this column will be reserved for the words of Rice football head coach Mike Bloomgren himself in his postgame comments with the media following the Owls’ 45-0 loss to UTSA. No need to dress it up. Here’s the head man himself:

Opening Statement

“Obviously not how we wanted this game to go, not how we planned for this game to go. We got taken to the woodshed. They beat us pretty good tonight. And we got outcoached and got outplayed — out-executed — it’s hard to say outplayed because I think our guys always play hard, but we had too much error in our game and made a lot of mistakes. And we paid dearly for them against a very, very good football team. We’ve got a lot of work to do if we want to continue to talk about ascending as a program. I think our fans deserve better. And we’re going to work our butts off to give it to them.”

On the loss coming directly following a bye week

“I think [the bye week] allowed us to feel really good about the gameplan; that allowed us to feel like we were in a really good place. And coming off two wins, you felt like we were taking positive steps, and tonight certainly was not a positive step. I think the only thing that I would point to tonight is that I thought our guys were really into the game for each other, they were playing for each other, and they were encouraging each other throughout the whole game. I think that’s where magic starts but nothing’s fun when you get beat like that, right?

There’s encouragement. There’s fight to the end. But we have to play better. We are in this to win. Coming out of the bye, thought we’d play a lot better than we did tonight, and we didn’t really execute on defense star standard and obviously offense was really bad.”

On what needs to change regarding the slow starts

“It’s probably confidence as much as anything. We are still fragile. We are still learning how to consistently win. And we’ve got to get to the point where when something bad happens, we set our jaw and when we say like, let’s go to the next play, let’s worry about what we can actually control, which is the next play, not the ones that have already happened. I think that’s something that we got to continue to work on. We are talking about it a good bit. And until we can get our confidence, I think that’s what we got to do. We got to find a way to make our own confidence, to earn our own confidence, and that’s why you practice, that’s why you do things in practice, that’s why you try to make those things really hard. But right now, we’re not able to shift the tide.

Momentum is such a big deal in this world. And I feel like when we get momentum rolling our way, we’re pretty fun. We have a lot of fun on the field and we’re scoring points and stopping people. We got to find a way to make that momentum go our way early in games.”

On what adjustments needs to be made moving forward

“I think that we’re gonna have to let this thing hurt, and we’re gonna have to learn from these corrections that these coaches will make on Monday and we better put a great game plan together for UAB. Because it’s not like they’re not the defendant conference champs…

We’ve got to make sure we have a complete understanding of what we’re doing, give our kids the best chance, and then we have to go execute. So we got to find out what we can execute at a high enough level to beat a team in Conference USA. And that’s what we need to do on offense and defense right now, whatever we’re good enough at. If we need to simplify, we need to simplify. If we need to do more, then we need to do more, we need to get more scheme. But again, it’s really heartbreaking to me for our players because I do think they’re playing really hard, they’re just not always playing well.”

On what needs to improve on offense

“I mean, look at those numbers. Gosh, we threw for 36 yards. We’ve got to make sure that we’re catching the ball when we throw it. We’ve got to throw it to the right place. We’ve got to throw it to the open guy. There’s not going to be a lot of magic here, but we also got to protect better. That’s where it’s always going to start for us. If we can protect the passer, we believe in our guys to take a drop and find the guy that’s open. But as I said we had a couple big drops that are disappointing, but we’ve got a long way to go in the throw game that we’ve got to improve on.”

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