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2025 Rice Football Season Preview: Offensive Line

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Next up in our 2025 Rice Football Season Preview: offensive line. Here’s our breakdown of the Owls’ plans for the group this season.

A new Rice football offensive scheme means a reworked offensive line, which will be asked to operate much differently than the unit was a season ago when Rice ran a more West Coast style of offense. While that was a tall order when head coach Scott Abell arrived, it’s been nothing but glowing endorsements of the progress made by the players they inherited in the offensive trenches to this point. Abell has continued to reiterate how optimistic he is about this unit.

Rice Football Preseason Preview: Check out the rest of the series here.

This piece is part of our 2025 Rice Football Season Preview. Get access to it, as well as all other preview posts such as positional breakdowns, depth chart and schedule analysis and more when you subscribe on Patreon today. 

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** Photo credit: Maria Lysaker **

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Rice Football Recruiting: OL Ian Bothwell commits to Owls

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Another trench bully has joined the 2025 Rice Football recruiting class. Offensive lineman Ian Bothwell has committed to the Owls.

National Signing Day is drawing near and the 2025 Rice Football recruiting class continues to stockpile talent. Given time to evaluate and hand-pick his targets, head coach Scott Abell and his staff keep adding to the relatively large class he inherited. One of those chosen additions came along the line. Offensive lineman Ian Bothwell has committed to the Owls.

Bothwell started to pick up some steam on the recruiting trail a year ago, landing early offers from Army, Navy and Air Force. Other FBS offers would follow from the likes of Kent State, UTEP, New Mexico and others before Rice stepped in and Bothwell shut things down in favor of the Owls.

“His proven track record to win was definitely something that was attractive,” Bothwell told The Roost, speaking of Abell. “He also seemed to have a very smart staff that seemed structured and experienced on how to run their offense.”

The addition of Bothwell rounds out a rather robust haul in the trenches. He joins fellow high school signings Erben Birkhoff, Colter Alberding and Cole Principe as well as commit Justin Michaelis and a pair of graduate transfers at the position. That’s a lot of big bodies for Abell and company to work with as they implement their new scheme.

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Standing 6-foot-5 and tipping the scales at 300 pounds, the film reflects just what one would expect from a man his size. Bothwell moves people with violence and has the requisite strength and power to win one one-on-one.

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