Rice Football never got into gear on the road against UAB, sputtering in all three phases in a loss to the two-win Blazers.
The much-maligned Trent Dilfer won the day on Saturday, earning a lopsided win over a listless Rice Football squad that never found its way. “I don’t think we played the game I felt we were going to play,” interim head coach Pete Alamar said. “I don’t think how we played matched how we practiced. I thought we practiced well.”
The loss adds to the pain of an underwhelming season that has gone so far awry. Here are a few immediate reactions from the game:
Out of Sync
UAB took a 14-7 lead early in the first quarter on the back of two plays. The first was a 90-yard kick return that set the Blazers up inside the five-yard line for a one-play touchdown drive. The next, a 48-yard touchdown run, came on the ensuing drive.
Six of the Blazers’ next seven plays went for first downs. The Rice football defense has been the backbone of this program all season long, if not longer. To see them struggle so severely was jarring, especially coming off the bye. Add on a fumble from tight end Elijah Mojarro and a picture began to form of a team that just wasn’t all on the same page.
To an extent, the apparent mental haze is understandable. This is a team coming off a bye with an interim head coach with two games left to play before an increasingly uncertain future begins might not have been as locked in as they’d been in previous weeks. These are human beings, after all.
Rice floundered even when handed 30 yards via penalties and set up with a first down at the three-yard line. Warner tossed his second interception of the day soon after, a 99-yard pick six that put Rice in a two-score hole at the break.
This running scheme is broken
This is probably a moot point with a coaching change looming, but the lack of rushing production from this team has been one of the most unexpected mysteries of the season. UAB entered this game dead last in the AAC in rush defense allowing 230 yards per game on the ground. And it wasn’t just some bad days against option teams. This run defense was actively bad.
Yet, Rice tallied 35 rushing yards in the first half en route to 115 total yards rushing in the contest. Game script wasn’t the reason the Owls weren’t able to run the football. They’re just not set up to do so, a mind-melting reality when one considers the years of talk of Intellectual Brutality and “pounding the rock”.
The lack of a running game has put more pressure on EJ Warner. While Warner has been better of late, there aren’t many offenses in the country that get better when they throw everything onto the back of their quarterback and ask them to be Superman each and every play.
Regardless of how things got to this point, this reality isn’t sustainable. It’s probably fitting the program will be forced to go back to the drawing board and find a new solution on offense this offseason.
Flashes of (Defensive) Brilliance
Even though turnovers have largely eluded them, the Rice football defense has been one of the better chaos-creating units in the conference this season. Rice entered this game second in the conference in sacks per game and fourth in tackles for loss per game.
Gabe Taylor picked up the Owls first sack of the afternoon, exploding off the edge and knocking the ball out in the process.
Defense –> Offense pic.twitter.com/7jXDvAP8PD
— The Roost (@AtTheRoost) November 23, 2024
Plays like this have enabled this unit to thrive. Even when the ball doesn’t come out, putting the opposing offense in second-and-long and third-and-long situations has largely paid off.
That aggressiveness proved to be an important tone-setter early in the second-half, too. A five yard tackle for a loss by Ty Flowers helped secure a quick three-and-out, giving the Owls’ offense another chance to wake up. It’s not the defenses fault the offense
Just one more
Over the past month, sources confirmed to The Roost that Rice football was prepared to accept a bowl berth should they qualify under the five-win APR exception. That’s how the Owls made their first bowl trip under head coach Mike Bloomgren.
It won’t be in play this year. The loss to UAB in Birmingham on Saturday was the eighth loss of the season for program, officially closing the door on any bowl hopes, however faint they might have been.
Alamar said that although there was an understanding what this loss meant for those bowl hopes, he did not directly address it with the team postgame. “There was a ton of reasons to come out here and play well and win this game,” he said. “We did not play well enough to win.”
Instead of playing for a miracle against South Florida next weekend, Rice will officially be ending an era. The program will honor its seniors who helped raise the floor of this program from a one-win team to a consistently competitive force will be thanked. At the same time, Rice will be eagerly awaiting a new leader.
Whoever this new head coach will be, he’ll be tasked with achieving what Bloomgren was never able to do here at South Main: find the ceiling.
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