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Rice Football Recruiting: Surveying the Owls’ initial 2022 offers

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The Rice football offseason calendar is moving along. National Signing Day is done, spring ball is here and the 2022 recruiting class is ramping up.

Ever since recruiting director Alex Brown was hired, National Signing Day has signaled a turning of the page to the next recruiting cycle. Over the past two years, Rice football recruiting has issued more offers to the upcoming class during the week of National Signing Day than it has received commitments from the immediate class.

That trend proved true this year as well, albeit with somewhat of a more narrow scope. Rice has offered 15 players in the 2022 class prior to the month of March, down from 27 players offered at this time last year.

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The lack of any sort of in-person meetings with these players has to account for some of the gap. The NCAA announced they were extending the dead period again, this time through May 31.

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Rice Football: 5 Observations on Owls’ Spring Roster

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The 2021 Rice Football spring roster has been released. From thoughts on newcomers to departing names, here are five initial observations.

There has been a lot of movement on the coaching staff, but that hasn’t been the only interesting development for the Owls in the past few days. The 2021 Rice Football spring roster was posted over the weekend. You can find the full list here, but we’ve gone a step further and broken down some things that stood out from the initial list.

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We’ll start with the most important note, with more observations to follow. We’ll also have all the latest updates on spring practice when it gets underway in March. From position battles to early depth chart projections, you won’t want to miss it. If you’re not a subscriber, now is a great time to jump on board.

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1. No Mike Collins

This shouldn’t come as a shock to those who have been following along this winter, but quarterback Mike Collins was not listed on the initial spring roster. We’ve still not had any clarification from head coach Mike Bloomgren as to what transpired last fall — hopefully, we get some answers when practices begin — but for now, it looks like Rice will be starting over at the quarterback position once again.

Collins was only expected to be a one-year solution when he was signed. He would have been out of eligibility entering 2021 had it not been for COVID-19 and revised eligibility standards.

As was the case last fall, the Owls will enter spring practice with their future quarterback on the roster. JoVoni Johnson and incoming grad transfer Jake Constantine will be the presumptive favorites to win the job for the upcoming season. It should be an interesting battle to watch this spring.

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Rice Football Recruiting: Superlatives for the 2021 Signees

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The 2021 Rice Football class made is flush with talent. Here are our picks for just a handful of standouts from the incoming class.

National Signing Day is in the books. With the possible exception of a key transfer addition (or two) in the months ahead, this will be the group of new players added to the Owls’ roster for the upcoming season. The 2021 Rice Football recruiting class has hometowns that span from California to New Jersey. Now they’re all headed to South Main.

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The 20 new signees were hand-selected by the Rice football recruiting staff, and each comes with some sort of notoriety in their own way. If you haven’t yet, check out our breakdowns of the defensive signees and the offensive signees. Now, here’s our run down of class superlatives. Who is going to start out of the gate? Which player represented the biggest recruiting win for the Owls? Best athlete? Here are our picks.

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The Roost Podcast | Ep 69 – 2021 National Signing Day and Offseason Recap

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The 2021 Rice Football recruiting class wrapped things up on National Signing Day. We debrief it all and talk roster and offseason news.

We’re back! After a short break to recover from a strange 2020 season, Carter and Matthew open up 2021 talking about the most recent Rice Football recruiting class and everything that has transpired for the Owls over the past month.

For a more detailed position-by-position look at the class, listen back to the Early Signing Period recap, which included discussion on the fast majority of the new signees. Rice added just two players to the fold from mid-December onward.

You can always find previous episodes on the podcast page. For now, give a listen to Episode 69.

Episode Notes

  • Housekeeping
    • Offseason schedule taking shape. We’ll have more interviews coming with some of your favorite Owls featuring returning (and hopefully a few new) guests. That schedule is currently in the works. Stay tuned!
    • Please support us on Patreon. Be the first to get the inside scoop on what’s going on with Rice football and stick around for even further analysis. We’ll have more breakdowns of the 2021 class and a look ahead at 2022 coming soon, and that’s just on the recruiting front!
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  • Catching up on Rice Athletics news
    • COVID-19 impacts on non-football sports
    • Special Teams coordinator Drew Svoboda leaves for Memphis
    • 2021 Rice football schedule and spring ball on track
  • Rice Football recruiting and National Signing Day
    • Rice adds two transfers — QB Jake Constantine and WR Tre Patterson
    • Four early enrollees
    • 2021 class third-highest rated in program history
    • Wish list for future transfers
  • 2021 Roster Update
    • Updates on departing seniors
    • Who is coming back in 2021?

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 Recruiting: Robust recruiting hauls continue with 2021 class

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National Signing Day is in the books and another highly-rated Rice football recruiting class is on its way to South Main.

Rice Football announced the hiring of Mike Bloomgren on December 6, 2017. He assembled his first official Rice Football recruiting class in the immediate weeks that followed. That first group, pulled together almost on the fly, ranked No. 12 in Conference USA and No. 117 in the nation. That set the floor.

It’s not uncommon for recruiting classes to wane in transition years, but that class actually was five spots better in the national ranks than the year prior (No. 122) and marginally better ranked. Things ticked upward in the following cycle for 2019 when Rice signed the No. 111 class in the nation and the No. 11 class in C-USA. The seemingly modest improvement proved to be the fifth most talented class in program history.

That 2019 group contained impact players like Bradley Rozner, Naeem Smith, De’Braylon Carroll, Jake Bailey and Tre’shon Devones, among others. Then Bloomgren and Co. signed the 2020 Rice Football recruiting class which earned the distinction of being the highest-rated class in school history. And now comes 2021.

With National Signing Day in the books, Rice holds the No. 93 class in the nation and the No. 5 class in Conference USA. It’s the first time Rice has finished in the top five in its conference in recruiting since 2013. From a rankings perspective, it’s the third-most talented class Rice has ever signed.

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In short, Rice has signed three of their five most talented classes in program history in the past three seasons. Take a look:

Rice Football, Rice Football Recruiting
Rice football has signed three of their top five classes in program history in the past three recruiting cycles. (No. 1 – 2020, No. 3 – 2021, No. 5 – 2019 : No. 2 – 2010, No. 4 – 2013).

Bloomgren signees account for three of the top 10 highest-rated recruits the Owls have ever signed. That list includes safety Gabe Taylor (No. 1),  linebacker DJ Arkansas (No. 7) and wide receiver Jake Bailey (No. 8), one from each of the last three classes.

All this comes with the understood caveat that rankings systems aren’t perfect. But the current staff can’t fix inherent flaws in that system. All they can do is ensure they bring the best talent they can to South Main. Through four cycles, they’ve fulfilled that objective emphatically.

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