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Rice Football Recruiting: 2021 DL Elroyal Morris commits to Owls

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The 2021 Rice Football recruiting class continues to grow. Dekaney defensive lineman Elroyal Morris has committed to the Owls.

Rice football recruiting has developed a pretty strong track record. They’re not afraid to be the first to offer anyone who meets their rigorous criteria. Those were the circumstances surrounding the recruitment of Dekaney lineman Elroyal Morris.

Rice was the first to offer Morris. They were active in his recruitment from start to finish. In many ways, everything went according to plan.

The Owls offered Morris on National Signing Day as part of a 2021 blitz that included a half dozen other offers. Morris had already established a relationship with the staff at that point and seemed poised to make the jump in short order. His social media accounts profile pictures reflected him decked out in Rice attire, all that was left was to make his lean official.

More: 2021 Rice Football Recruiting Tracker

Morris has done that now, committing to Rice amidst the coronavirus lockdown. He becomes the seventh member of the 2021 Rice Football Recruiting class and the second defensive line commit, joining Blake Boenisch, another Houston-area product.

Rice has broadcast its commitment to a national recruiting strategy, but they’ve maintained a commitment to winning in-state too. Six of the Owls’ seven commits hail from the state of Texas.

The 2021 defensive haul is starting to look rather impressive. Along with Boenisch and Morris, a trio of linebackers rounds out Conference USA’s top-ranked recruiting class. The Owls were already No. 1 on that front before adding Morris to the fold. He’ll add to the Owls’ advantage as the Early Signing Period begins to approach.

Standing 6-foot-3 and tipping the scales at 270 pounds, Morris is a bully in the trenches. He’ll enter Rice with a frame ready to be built upon, already set with a strong foundation for his future.

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Contingency plans for the 2020 College Football Season

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The 2020 college football season is unlikely to go on as planned. What alternatives are being discussed? How will they impact Rice football?

The sports world is on pause as the globe works through a pandemic that has left chaos in its wake. When can we play ball again isn’t the most important question that needs to be answered now, but a return to sports, to a unifying cause, would be a welcome distraction.

For that reason, contingency plans are being worked. Possibilities upon possibilities are being propagated. Rice football, like everyone else, waits for a resolution. Here’s what I’m hearing about potential options for the upcoming college football season.

When will the season start?

Playing the season as planned with kickoffs beginning in late August is the first, and most tenuous scenario. The next would be a delayed start. That could involve pushing games back several weeks and continuing the regular season through December. More drastic still, a third option is gaining traction: football in the spring.

Multiple sources have mentioned a growing sentiment in the industry toward a much later start date. College football is the monetary engine that drives so many athletic programs. The ramifications of a lost season could be potentially devastating. Even though the offset would inevitably cause challenges of its pow, playing later in the academic calendar would absolutely be on the table.

Potential schedule adjustments

Different states have been impacted by the coronavirus to varying degrees of severity. Individual governors have passed their own stay-at-home-orders and various public safety initiatives. Gathering together a conference that runs from Texas to Virginia will be an arduous task and Conference USA won’t be alone in that struggle. Every conference consists of members from a half dozen states, if not more.

Alternative schedules and games with and without fans are on the table. Quite frankly, everything is on the table. Here are three possibilities that I found most interesting.

1. Conference games only

If the season can be delayed and truncated, Rice would play some component of C-USA teams, possibly just those currently on their schedule. Nonconference games (vs Army, vs Houston, vs Lamar, vs LSU) would be canceled.

2. Semi-regionalized scheduling

The last two ideas seem like longshots, but nothing has been predictable over the course of the last month and a half.

A long-rumored intermingling between Conference USA and Sun Belt teams has been floated around. In that scenario, the C-USA West and the Sun Belt would “merge” for the 2020 season, allowing for reduced travel and a more localized footprint. The lack of any major TV considerations might make this plan more viable than Option 3.

3. Texas-only scheduling

What if Texas is able to return to football but nearby states can’t? That could prohibit Option 1 and Option 2 from taking place. The only alternative remaining that included the possibility of college football would be an all-Texas league.

The logistics to be navigated would be unimaginably complicated, but even in-state powers like Texas and Texas A&M have financial considerations that would make not playing football this season a major problem. Likewise, ESPN, Fox and others would prefer to televise some football games rather than no football games.

If all of those parties can thread the needle — and that’s what it would take — the results could be spectacular. For one year we could be looking at an All-Texas Conference split like this:

  • West | Texas, Texas Tech, TCU, Texas State, UTSA, and UTEP
  • East | Texas A&M, Baylor, North Texas, SMU, Houston and Rice

All of this comes with a massive caveat. “There is no clarity right now for anyone,” a source familiar with these discussions told me. Right now, these ideas are just ideas, albeit ideas that have started to circulate within the college football community.

My two cents: if there’s any feasible way to bring together an all-Texas league for just one year. Please, someone make it happen. Have any theories or ideas? Leave them in the comments.

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The Roost Podcast | Ep. 29 – Christian Covington and Rice memories

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Christian Convington joins The Roost Podcast this week in the next installment of our longest offseason interview series.

The Roost Podcast is doing chugging along. In our newfound world without sports on the field, we’ve found time to sit down and interview current and former Rice Athletes across several sports. If you haven’t caught recent episodes, you’ll want to check out visits with Erica Ogwumike, JP Heath, Taylor McHargue and more.

This week former Rice football defensive lineman Christian Covington joined the show. We talked about his recruitment from Canada, his rude awakening to the Texas heat and what’s been going on in his life during the recent shutdown. From favorite JJ Watt stories to his free agency updates, you won’t want to miss it.

You can always find previous episodes on the podcast page. For now, Give a listen to Episode 29.

Episode 29 Notes

  • Housekeeping — If you’re on Twitter, please give the show a follow. Get a sneak peak when episodes are inbound and the latest happening by turning on notifications. We promise not to spam you and you’ll be the first to know when new shows drop. It’s a win-win.
  • Christian Covington joins the show — After interviewing his Rice football teammate Taylor McHargue on a previous episode, Covington was kind enough to join us this week. We discussed:
    • What free agency looks like during a pandemic
    • His journey from Canada to Rice to the NFL
    • His impressions on the Rice football program today
    • Favorite memories on and off the field at Rice
    • JJ Watt’s generosity and laser tag prowess … and more.

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: Oddsmakers rising on Owls for 2020

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Rice football is becoming more palatable in the eyes of Vegas oddsmakers. Those experts tab the Owls as a fringe bowl team in 2020.

The oddsmakers haven’t loved Rice football since the program began its rebuild two seasons ago. Preseason expectations have hovered somewhere between two to three wins per season, essentially a smidge above UTEP in the Conference USA pecking order. The first signs of the oddsmakers’ changing perception of the Owls have appeared in recent days.

Even with sporting events on an indefinite hiatus, the books released their numbers. Caesar’s set the over-under on Rice football 2020 regular season wins at 5.5. Only three teams in the West (UAB, Southern Miss and Louisiana Tech) had higher totals. UAB and FAU set atop the totals with eight apiece.

5.5 wins might not seem like that much of a leap from 2.5, but three wins is quite the jump for the oddsmakers considering a 12 game season. If Rice beats the number, something those inside the walls at South Main has been readying for since their season ended, Rice would be a bowl team for the first time since 2014.

BetOnline followed a week later with odds to win Conference USA West. UAB was the favorite at 5/4 with Louisiana Tech next in line at 5/2. Then came Southern Miss at 11/4 and Rice at 14/1.

For those unfamiliar with the fractional output, 14/1 odds equate to roughly a 6.7 percent chance of Rice winning the West. That’s a low number, but it’s leaps and bounds higher than UTEP (250/1, 0.4 percent) and the Miners hired their head coach at the same time as the Owls.

Projections will only carry Rice football so far. Eventually, they’ll have to prove those expectations on the field. That’s an opportunity for which coach Bloomgren and his players are eagerly awaiting.

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Rice Football: OC Jerry Mack to coach quarterbacks

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The Rice football coaching staff has two additional changes. Offensive coordinator Jerry Mack is moving to the quarterback room.

Earlier this spring, when Rice football practices were still in session, two of three notable coaching changes were announced. Sanders Davis and Chris Monfiletto were promoted from within, filling vacated spots on the coaching staff. Davis will coach the offensive line while Monfiletto will coach the tight ends.

One more change has been announced. Mike Bloomgren detailed the additional move during a conversation the JP Heath on an episode of Rice Owls Insider. Offensive coordinator Jerry Mack will now coach quarterbacks while former quarterbacks coach Robbie Picazo will coach running backs.

This is Mack’s third position group he’s been responsible for at Rice. He started with the wide receivers in 2018 before shifting to running backs last season. His experience as a head coach at North Carolina Central combined with experiences in several different offenses made him a valuable sounding board for the rest of the offensive staff.

During the year he was inserted in the quarterback meetings. Bloomgren credits that to the development of the position over time. “We were best last year when Jerry Mack was in the quarterback room full time,” he said, later adding that position group, in particular, were ones who “need to hear the voice of our coordinator.”

The Roost Podcast: Taylor McHargue discusses 2013 C-USA Championship team 

Mack’s influence on the offense was clear in the tail end of the 2019 season. With JoVoni Johnson at the controls, the Owls spread things out, balancing their traditional ground and pound with a more conventional look. Bloomgren hinted more of that could be in store for the future, making Mack’s presence in the quarterback room going forward a key component of any offensive evolution.

Picazo won’t be going far, but he will have a new responsibility. Learning from Bloomgren at Stanford, Picazo’s only experience has been in this system working with quarterbacks. Bloomgren wants him to give him a chance to develop and influence a new portion of the offensive. Former running backs coach Drew Svoboda has been working with him during the spring as he gets up to speed.

From an optics standpoint, the swap makes a lot of sense. The Rice offense looked its best last season when Mack had a direct line of communication into the quarterback room. Credit to Bloomgren for noticing the improvement and acting on it, even if that required some musical chairs on his staff to accomplish.

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