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Unpacking the Rice football QB carousel — November 2021 Patreon Q&A

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Understanding the Rice football quarterback usage took center stage in this month’s line of questions. How were they deployed, and why?

Four different quarterbacks saw action for Rice football in 2021 and injuries told just part of the story. The genesis of this overview comes from a valid, and probing question: “Why did the Owls not use TJ McMahon during the year?” Did the coaching staff not know what he could do? Did they not trust him? And how did his usage fit in the big picture? We’ll unpack all of those angles here.

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Photo credit Maria Lysaker
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Rice Football 2021: Charlotte presser quotes, updates and depth chart

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Rice football plays Charlotte next in a battle of 2-2 C-USA foes. Here’s what Mike Bloomgren had to say about the matchup, injury updates and depth chart notes.

This is the first of a couple of updates coming this week as Rice football prepares to take on  Charlotte. We’ll include updates from head coach Mike Bloomgren’s midweek press conference, then dig further into the details on the depth chart and what the team looks like on the field headed into the weekend.

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Rice football will be forced to make a quarterback change once again. We’ll dive into the move from Wiley Green to Jake Constantine and how this impacts the Owls this week. First, the quotes:

Press Conference Quotes

“I was really proud of how the guys attacked it (in practice). Thought they were locked into the game plan. And I was disappointed to see it not fully translate on Saturday. There were parts of it that were good. They were individual players that were really good, but certainly thought we had opportunities in every phase that we could have played better and probably would have been able to win the game had we played better.” – Mike Bloomgren on the North Texas loss

“Obviously, Wiley [Green’s] injury on our first offensive drive of the game was tough. It was tough for everybody. It was tough for me. It was tough to see Wiley hurting. He’s one of our rocks and I don’t think there was anybody on our team who wasn’t rocked by his injury. It took us a little bit of time to get past that. We eventually did. We worked through it as a team and we started playing football again.

“An update on Wiley; he will be out this week. I did talk to him. He is in great spirits. His message to the team was to go do what we said we were going to do, which is go earn an opportunity to play in a bowl game. That’s what we’re going to try to do for him.” – Mike Bloomgren on Wiley Green

“Moving forward with Jake Constantine as our starter, I thought that, again, once he got settled in, he played some good really good football. He had a great me-to-you factor with Jake Bailey and I thought Jake made some tremendous plays for us. Staying alive and then making plays when the ball was in the air to keep some drives alive and to help us end up in the box. So that was great.” – Mike Bloomgren on Jake Constantine

Depth Chart

The Rice football depth chart has one minor tweak this week, and one rather large one:

Rice Football

Quarterback changes, again

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Rice Football 2021 Game Preview: Charlotte

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Rice Football needs a bounce-back win in the worst way as they travel to Charlotte for a Week 10 tilt. How to watch, key stats, x-factor picks and more.

Both Charlotte and Rice football would rather forget their last trips to the gridiron. Charlotte was dismantled by Western Kentucky, falling on the road by a final score of 45-13. Rice played their opponent, North Texas, much closer, but an overtime loss was no more satisfying given the expectations they carried into the game. Both teams need a reset in the worst way. Here’s what you need to know:

Kickoff time | 2:30 PM CT
Venue | Jerry Richardson Stadium – Charlotte, NC
TV | ESPN+
Radio | Sports Map 94.1 (FM) / Stretch Internet (Online)

Audio / Visual Preview

We’ll preview Rice football vs Charlotte this week’s episode of the Blue and Gray Preview Show, streaming live on Wednesday at Noon on the Rice Athletics YouTube channel. You can also catch the recap of last week’s game on The Roost Podcast, which should be released shortly. Find us on the podcast page or wherever you like to listen to podcasts. (And consider leaving us a 5-star review while you’re at it.)

Sizing up the contenders

Charlotte and Rice each enter this game .500 in C-USA action with four more games to play. The winner is still probably on the outside looking in regarding a potential trip to the conference championship game, but the loser is in danger of tumbling even further down the standings.

Each program has flashed moments of success. Charlotte upset Duke earlier in the season. Rice knocked off UAB. Neither has been able to channel those everything-went-right games into the type of consistency they need to regularly win conference games so far. After being viewed as up-and-coming programs entering the 2020 season, this game has the potential to reinforce those aspirations or crush them, depending on who ends up on which side of the result.

Series History

All Time | Rice leads Charlotte, 2-0
Last Five | Rice leads Charlotte, 2-0
Last Meeting | Away 2016, Rice won 22-21

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Get access to practice reports, analysis and special features during the week when you subscribe to our All-American Tier on Patreon today. If you want updates on how Rice football plans to deploy its quarterbacks, position battles, standouts, injuries and more, this is your go-to source. A few sections of this preview are reserved for those subscribers. Don’t miss out! Join now!

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Rice Stat Notables

Passing | Constantine – 65/96 (67.7 percent), 806 yards, 5 TD, 2 INT
Rushing | Myers – 82 carries, 316 yards (3.9 yards per carry), 7 TD
Receiving | Bailey – 39 receptions, 433 yards (11.1 yds/rec), 2 TD / Patterson – 20 receptions, 296 yards (14.8 yds/rec), 2 TD
Tackles | Montero – 54 / Smith – 44 / Garcia – 44
Pass Breakups | McCord/Dunbar – 5, Smith – 4
Interceptions | Smith/Nyakwol – 2, Four others tied with one

Charlotte Stat Notables

Passing | Reynolds – 127/192 (66.2 percent), 1537 yards passing, 16 TD, 5 INT
Rushing | Camp – 74 carries, 451 yards (6.1 yards per carry), 3 TD / Byrd – 92 carries, 375 yards (4.1 ypc), 1 TD
Receiving | DuBose – 37 receptions, 561 yards (15.2 yards per reception), 5 TD / Tucker – 40 receptions, 553 yards (13.8 yds/rec), 2 TD
Tackles | Murray – 55 / Watts – 45 / Alexander – 41
Interceptions | Alexander -2, Two tied with one apiece
Pass Breakups | Creamer – 4, Rogers – 3, Ursery – 3

Charlotte X-Factor | Take a few shots, and convert on them

Charlotte has one of the better “intermediate” offenses in Conference USA. The 49ers aren’t quite explosive — they’ve tallied six plays of 30+ yards against conference foes, tied for the second-fewest in Conference USA — but they have a knack for getting 10 yards, and they do it almost as well as anyone else in the league.

Charlotte’s 62 plays of 10+ yards rank third in Conference USA play. While they don’t hit home runs very often, they’ll nickel and dime defenses all the way down the field. If they do start producing players further down the field, the offense can get dangerous, quickly.

A veteran quarterback and two playmaking wide receivers have the ability to give the Rice defense all sorts of trouble. If they do, not only will they be ready to trade punches with the Owls, they might be able to deliver a few knockout blows of their own.

Rice X-Factor | Jake Constantine

Constantine hasn’t been perfect this season, but he’s been a key piece in two of the Owls’ three wins this year. He rallied the team last week, showing off some schoolyard improvisation skills to will the team down the field and force overtime.

With Wiley Green likely to miss extended time after suffering an ankle injury last week and the running game struggling to get going this year, Constantine is going to have to take charge. If he doesn’t, it’s hard to decipher how the Rice offense is going to find enough success to win on the road without his help.

If he plays as well as he’s played up to this point, Rice will put points on the board. And that’s something Charlotte does not want any part of this year. The 49ers rank second to last in conference play, allowing 38.8 points per game.

Pick ‘Em Contest (Subscribers only)

Make sure you submit your entry for The Roost’s weekly pick’em challenge. There will be swag and prizes for the top finishers at the end of the season. Choose an answer to each of the six questions below and comment on this post on the Patreon page to enter. It’s that easy.

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Injury Report (Subscribers only)

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One Final Thing

Up until last week, Rice hadn’t lost a game to someone they were “supposed to beat” and they’d engineered one of their most memorable upsets in recent memory when they took down UAB on the road. Not that oddsmakers would have had faith in the Owls before, but now they’ve put Rice back in the underdog role. Given how this team faired last week, easing up the pressure can’t be a bad thing.

Still, this team has to be feeling some pressure. They’re on the precipice of losing control of a postseason bowl appearance. To get there, Rice needs to win three of four, a feat they’ve done once already this year. They haven’t won three in a row yet, though, a feat the Owls’ haven’t achieved since the final three games of the 2019 season. For a team that has been erratic from week to week, preserving that margin of error seems like an absolute necessity.

Whether it’s a coincidence or not that the Owls have been more proficient on the road than they have been at home doesn’t really matter. All that matters right now is finding a way to win this game. After the UAB win, it was easy to think ahead at what could be. Now that luxury has passed and all eyes have to be on Charlotte. The wiggle room is running out.

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Rice football: Ball falls to Jake Constantine as running game stutters

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Jake Constantine fell just short of leading Rice football to a comeback win. With Wiley Green injured, the task of getting the team back on track falls to him.

For everything that went right when Rice football upset UAB the weekend prior, there was something that seemed to go wrong in the Owls’ overtime loss to North Texas.

The contest immediately following Wiley Green’s career game saw him leave the field on a cart. The defense, which stopped the Blazers on downs twice and forced two turnovers gave up touchdowns following all but one Rice scoring drive, excluding the final kneel down before overtime.

Head coach Mike Bloomgren ran through all of what went wrong for his team on Saturday, but summed it up with a crushing reality of what sunk Rice against North Texas: “Our inability to effectively run the ball and to stop the run — two things that we think are trademarks of our program – When we can’t do those two things it’s going to be hard for the Rice Owls to win.”

Rice football averaged 2.1 yards per carry against North Texas, the seventh time since the beginning of the 2020 season in which the Owls have averaged fewer than 3.0 yards per carry, a span on 13 games. Conversely, Rice has averaged more than 4.0 yards per carry on three occasions over the time, one of which was a blowout loss to Texas earlier this season.

Rice has won games with poor showings on the ground in the very recent past. Their 2.94 yards per carry clip against UAB was underwhelming, but they got just enough when they needed it. Nevertheless, in general, it’s been tough sledding on the ground for a team that wants to run the ball.

On the other side of the ball, Rice has held its opponents below 3.0 yards per carry three times in the last 13 games and allowed 5.0 yards per carry on five separate occasions. Injuries up front have hampered the Owls’ on the defensive line this season, but even without De’Braylon Carroll off the field, they’re still trotting out good defensive linemen, a few of which have drawn attention from NFL scouts.

More: Rice Football falls in overtime to North Texas 

Despite those shortcomings, and particularly the Owls’ struggles on this particular Saturday, Rice fought back and tied the game in the final seconds. “I thought the defense finding a way to get a stop at the end and the offense finding a way to take the ball down and send the game in overtime, that’s winning football,” Bloomgren said. “Now what we did in overtime is not.”

Unfortunately for Constantine and the Owls, the proverbial clock struck midnight before the comeback could be truly completed. But it was his arm and his legs that gave Rice the only real chance they had to win this game. On the eve of Halloween, the veteran gunslinger put on his best Houdini impression, escaping would-be tackles to create off schedule. On two separate fourth down conversions, he broke free, kept the play alive, and delivered a strike at the moment his team needed it the most.

“I’ve been messing around, making those plays since I was a little kid,” Constantine said afterward, shrugging off his own heroics.

His coach was more effusive in his praise. “The plays he made to Jake Bailey and plays he made with his feet, he gave us a chance,” Bloomgren said. “That’s who that kid’s been since he’s been here. You know, he’s been a wild horse rider and finding a way to make plays.”

If the running game isn’t working, perhaps it’s time to hand the ball over to the one man who was able to find production in an otherwise disappointing fall afternoon. Protection was up and down, but Constantine repeatedly picked himself up off the mat and made play after play after play. Had he put a touch less on a third-down pass in overtime, the result could have been different. But by and large, if Constantine wasn’t clicking, not much else was.

From week to week, the running game has been hot and cold. The defense has been good and bad. The special teams have shared in those highs and lows. Constantine, while not perfect has thrown five touchdowns to just two interceptions and been at the controls of the offense in two of their three wins.

Given the expected severity of Green’s injury, it will more than likely fall to Constantine to lead Rice the rest of the way. “We’re definitely not out of the fight into making a bowl game,” he said. “I think we’re a great team and we can easily win three more games.” It won’t be easy, but it’s possible. And much of it will fall on his shoulders to carry Rice football to where they want to go.

Photo credit Maria Lysaker
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Rice Football 2021: Offense preps for encore as UNT game looms

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It was a positive week of practice for Rice football as they prepare for North Texas. Halfway through the season, the Owls are finding their rhythm.

Who wasn’t on the field was almost as big of a story for Rice football this week as who would be available. The depth chart will have differences based on availability, but those who will go have been active on the practice field this week.

Subscriber content.<br /> Please login to see the full post or visit our Patreon page.

For those checking in for the first time, or those returning, a quick programming note. Practice reports are reserved for our subscribers. If you want updates on how Rice football plans to deploy its quarterbacks, position battles, standouts, injuries and more, this is your go-to source. You can get access to all practice notes, recruiting updates and special features like this one when you subscribe to our All-American Tier on Patreon today.

Finding the right ryhthm in the backfield

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