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Rice Football: Spring Practice Takeaways – March Q&A

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A month into Rice Football spring practices, some clarity is emerging. This Q&A focuses on what we’ve learned about the Owls on the gridiron so far.

More than half of spring practices are in the books, and a better picture of what Rice football will look like under head coach Scott Abell is beginning to form. This month’s Q&A focuses on some of those takeaways, ranging from the team’s propensity to avoid huddling and the quarterback race to what’s going on with the kicking game.

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Q: On the new offense: Will the team huddle? Will the linemen line up in a 2-point stance?

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Rice Football 2024: Memphis Game Week Practice Report

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Rice football returned to the field with one focus: beating Memphis. Here’s what we learned from the Owls at practice this week.

Once again, it was hard to find space around the Rice football facility this week that didn’t have a “Beat Memphis” sign on full display. The Owls implemented a similar tactic against Navy last week and found success. Work has been put in the field, too. Here’s where the team stands prior to the Memphis game this weekend.

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Running out of backs

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Rice Football overcomes 5-hour delay to knock off Navy

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Rice football persevered through a five-hour delay and a water-logged field to knock off Navy in the Owls’ first game under interim head coach Pete Alamar.

The rain eventually let up, but Rice football never did. Despite the adversity of an in-season firing and a game against a Navy team previously unbeaten in conference play, the Owls took the Midshipmen to deep water and drowned them in the Houston storms. The win was the first for Rice over Navy since 2002 and the first-ever career win for interim head coach Pete Alamar. Here are a few immediate reactions from the game:

Hours, not minutes

When he met with the media on Tuesday for the very first time as interim head coach, Pete Alamar made a vow to all assembled. “A Pete Alamar led football team is going to fight their butt off for 60 minutes or however long it takes,” he said. Little did anyone know much more than 60 minutes would be required for the Owls’ interim head coach to make good on that declaration.

Rice football was scheduled to host Navy, undefeated in conference play, at 3:00 PM CST on Saturday afternoon. That start time came and went as roving thunderstorms took turns abusing South Main. The ball was finally kicked at 5:30 pm but the Owls were only permitted one drive, which ended in a punt, before the weather forced both teams to their locker rooms for another hour.

When play resumed — three and a half hours after the original kick time — Tyson Flowers intercepted Navy quarterback Blake Horvath’s first attempt. Rice ran three plays and got the ball inside the five-yard line before lightning again forced an extended delay.

In total, the delays would last five hours and six minutes, approximately 20 minutes shy of the longest recorded weather delay in college football history. The stadium clock read 8:39 pm when the ball was snapped and Dean Connors sprinted off tackle for the opening touchdown. Rice took the lead on that play and never let up.

Hours upon hours of frustration and angst following the dismissal of head coach Mike Bloomgen earlier in the week boiled over in an outburst that would not be quelled. Led by an interim head coach, the Owls posted their most impressive win of the season.

Offensive explosion

That outburst would not have been possible without precision execution from the Owls’ offense once the game truly began in earnest. Rice built on Connors’ touchdown run with a hook-and-ladder conversion on third and long to set up a pin-point touchdown toss from EJ Warner to Matt Sykes between double-coverage.

Tim Horn tacked on a 47-yard field goal on the Owls’ following possession. Just like that, the double-digit home underdogs had a three-score lead over one of the league’s three remaining unbeaten teams.

The offense was held in check for the next four drives. Navy was more disciplined on defense during that time, but they were also aided by an incredulous interception by Warner, who threw into double coverage in the endzone on a first down play in which his receiver was beaten off the line and never had a chance to play on the ball.

After trading punts to start the second half, the offense returned to form, grinding out an 11-play, 80-yard drive punctuated by another touchdown run from Connors to put Rice in front 24-7. Buoyed by an impressive defensive showing, that proved to be more than enough to get the job done.

Defensive dominance

Navy came into the contest averaging 46.5 points per game in conference play, the best mark in the AAC. The Midshipmen run a triple-option scheme similar, albeit not quite the same, as the offense Army runs. The Black Knights dropped 37 points on the Owls a few weeks ago and didn’t seem to break a sweat. Holding Navy to a respectable output would have been a reasonable measure of success, but the Rice football had loftier goals in mind.

Rice held Navy to 112 yards of total offense in the first half, allowing exactly one drive in the Midshipmen’s first seven to extend beyond 15 yards. Owls were flying to the ball and making tackles, keeping deep shots out of the hands of receivers and, in at least two cases, taking the ball away themselves.

The defense stonewalled Navy on fourth and short in the redzone midway through the third quarter. They held the Middies to a field goal on an 18-play, 8-minute drive in the fourth quarter, utilizing sure-tackling and the clock to stifle the triple-option attack. Two fumbles, both of which Navy recovered, slowed that march, draining the clock and further.

Nothing was easy for the Navy offense on Saturday. The option attack, which had fooled so many teams, was rendered almost entirely ineffective against the Owls who were as assignment-sound of defense as they’ve been in any game this season. Navy had one run of 20+ yards, who made the right defense read time and time again.

A Navy offense that led the conference at 7.8 yards per play against conference foes was kneecapped on Saturday night and limited to just 4.3 per play. Horvath, who had been sacked three times in seven games, was sacked twice by Rice alone. The defense never flinched.

Just enough special teams

Not to be outdone, special teams did their part as well. Tyson Thompson routinely set the offense up with superb field position, averaging 17 yards per return on punts including a long of 30 yards. He put one on the deck but was able to recover. After taking over the job from Sean Fresch midseason, Thompson has found his niche and made several important contributions to this game.

Horn’s 47-yard field goal was the longest by an Owl this season and while Alex Bacchetta’s 50-yard boot wasn’t a season-long for the Owls’ punt team it rolled to a stop on the one-foot line, marking another superb field position win in a game in which every yard came at a premium.

It wasn’t a perfect day on the special teams front. Horn missed a 45-yard kick that would have made it a three-score game with 4:25 on the clock, but by that time the writing was on the wall. Everyone had done just enough and Rice football was going to win.

Predictably unpredictable

In many ways, Saturday’s stunner will become a fitting footnote on the 2024 Rice football season, which has not gone according to plan in any respect since the year began with a home upset to Sam Houston. The Owls weren’t expected to go 2-6, nor was snapping a decade-long losing streak to UTSA in the cards. Beating Navy with an interim head coach on the helm as double-digit underdogs? That wasn’t in the realm of possibility either.

But in the same way that none of this year has made sense, the unexpected continues to find Rice football.

Against Navy, that pendulum swung back in favor of the blue and gray as hard as it possibly could. Rice got a marquee win and the players in a locker room that has absorbed so much sadness in recent weeks had the chance to celebrate and exhale. Finally, after everyone had counted them out and the season had been written off as a failure, relief had come in the form a Homecoming win that so many on this team will remember for a lifetime.

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Rice Football smothered in Bayou Bucket loss to Houston

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Rice Football fell behind early and never threatened to catch up, ceding the Bayou Bucket to Houston after a one-year sojourn at South Main.

It had been more than 20 years since Rice football had claimed the Bayou Bucket in successive seasons. That streak will continue for quite some time longer after Saturday’s loss at TDECU Stadium. There’s one game left in the series as things stand and Rice can’t wait for another shot to redeem themselves from a rough outing in their biggest rivalry matchup. Here are a few immediate reactions from the game:

Going Sideways

Notwithstanding their big day on the scoreboard against Texas Southern, the Rice football offense has struggled to move the ball north and south this season. They’ve largely been a horizontal offense utilizing their speed to the edges to outflank their opponents and slowly matriculate their way down the field. When you’re playing a less talented opponent, that works. When you’re playing a Big 12 team that is just as athletic as you are if not more so, it’s impossible. Rice found that out the hard way, early on.

The first three plays from scrimmage were a Dean Connors run off left tackle followed by a swing pass to Connors off the left side and then a flat out to Boden Groen. They gained seven yards and punted. EJ Warner was under a decent amount of pressure early but misfired on most of his shots down the field. Rice didn’t get any points from their offense until there were 68 seconds left in regulation.

Against FCS competition, Rice has scored 69 points. Against FBS foes the Owls have mustered just 21 in twice as many quarters.

If there was a weak link, it was hard to identify. Warner missed some receivers downfield, the protection regularly failed to give him time to work and the receivers did not generate nearly enough separation. There were moments when everything seemed to come together, but the passing game was flat and horizontal making it near impossible to sustain any meaningful drive.

Rice had one snap on the plus side of the 50 in the first half and seven such plays in the second half. They were 2-for-13 on third down. For an offense, it doesn’t get much worse than this.

The personnel is the personnel. The staff is the staff. They’ve got to figure something out, fast.

Defense staves off a massacre

In hindsight, leading the nation in sacks through two games should have been the clear indicator that this current iteration of Rice football would be led by its defense. A tough opening quarter, which included 35 total yards from the offense and a punt return score, would have been so much worse if the defense hadn’t picked up the slack.

Josh Pearcy added to that sack total on the opening drive, although that takedown probably could have been credited to a few Owls, which is a testament to just how dominant the front seven has been so far this season.

The defense was burned for a handful of chunk plays but largely limited the backbreaking Houston punches to a pair of long first-quarter runs by Re’Shaun Sanford and a screen touchdown following a special teams mistake. A 37-yard run up the gut by Donovan Smith was the cherry on top of a garbage time sundae.

Forced to carry the load for the totality of the game, the defense added three sacks to their total and did a reasonable job containing Houston quarterback Donovan Smith and the Cougars’ rushing attack, which tried its best to drain the clock as quickly as it could. It might not have been a great day from the defense as a whole, but this phase of the ball wasn’t the reason Rice lost on Saturday.

Special teams roulette

Many of the largest swings in this game came in the sometimes overlooked third phase of football. Houston’s second touchdown was a 75-yard punt return touchdown. A few series later, a muffed punt by Sean Fresch was followed by a 44-yard touchdown from the Cougars on the very next play.

The Owls’ punt return woes didn’t stop there. Tyson Thompson, Fresch’s replacement, was leveled on his first return, putting the ball on the deck. Fortunately, Rice recovered and was aided further by a targeting penalty on the Cougars. The Owls were only in need of being bailed out because Thompson failed to signal for a fair catch, perhaps hoping to make the most of a rare opportunity.

While so many of his teammates struggled, Rice punter Alex Bacchetta was a bright spot on Saturday night at TDECU Stadium. Bacchetta punted seven times in the first half and two more in the second. The Rice football program record is 12 punts in one contest, most recently achieved by Jack Fox in 2018.

Bacchetta had one bad boot, a 24-yard on his first touch of the game. The remainder of his kicks were booming blasts. He averaged 42.2 yards per punt, 44.2 yards apiece when excluding the first dud. He was superb, but special teams on a whole were way too erratic in the moments that mattered most.

Behind schedule

Beating Houston would have gotten the Owls to 2-1, par for the season according to oddsmakers, with a marquee win and a rivalry trophy retained. The loss, while not unexpected from a spread standpoint, officially puts Rice behind expectations with a road trip to Army looming.

Picked to finish in the middle of the AAC, presumably with another bowl trip in tow, it’s time to officially put all of those aspirations on hold. Rice could very well achieve both of those objectives, but the team that was talked about as a dark horse to contend for the AAC title quite frankly hasn’t shown up to play in this season. Beating an FCS squad is nice, but the remainder of the schedule is against FBS opponents, against which Rice is 0-2.

Maybe things would feel a bit more hopeful if Rice had found a way to not stub their toe in their opening game against Sam Houston, but right now this is a team with more questions than answers and there are still two more games to play before the first bye week of the season.

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Rice Football blasts Texas Southern in bounce-back win

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Rice Football took command early and never let up, eviscerating Texas Southern in one of the most dominant wins of the Mike Bloomgren era.

Rice football took the field on Saturday with a newfound sense of urgency following last week’s debacle against Sam Houston. In that game, the Owls were ineffective in all three phases and were summarily thumped on their own (brand new) turf. Head coach Mike Bloomgren was adamant that his players and staff would take the wake-up call for what it was. “We will respond,” he vowed. His team did just that. Here are a few immediate reactions from the game:

Physically dominant

Perhaps the most irksome aspect of the Owls’ Week 1 loss was the degree to which they looked outclassed on both lines of scrimmage. Although the defense tallied seven sacks, Sam Houston ran the ball effectively. On the other side, the Owls’ offensive line offered little support for EJ Warner, continually leaving their quarterback under fire and failing to keep defenders out of the backfield.

A completely different team showed up Saturday night against Texas Southern.

“More than anything, we just need to play another game. I would have played Jones Junior High or I would have played Alabama. We need to play somebody today,” Bloomgren said. “We just needed to get a chance to get our room back and play football and love this thing and we did that. That’s what I’m happy about. We got a chance to play this game.”

The offensive line bullied the Texas Southern front for four quarters, making running lanes for Dean Connors and providing Warner plenty of time to work through progressions and find the open man. Consider the first touchdown of the game (below) which features a well-executed fullback block, a nice block from long pulling from the right side allowing Connors to get a couple of yards past the line of scrimmage before contact. Then he finishes the play in the endzone.

It was the same story on defense. The difference in intensity was night and day, highlighted by a celebratory three-player sack on the final drive of the first quarter. Officially the sack was shared by Blaise Tita and Myron Morrison — NCAA rules limit sacks shared to two individuals — but the play capped off a first quarter in which the Rice defense held Texas Southern to six total yards on three successive three-and-out series.

The first series that didn’t end with three plays and a punt for Texas Southern came early in the second quarter. That drive stopped on the second play, a pick-six by Tyson Flowers. Rice needed 60 minutes to score twice against Sam Houston. They had 28 points on the board against Texas Southern in less than 20 minutes. Rice was the more physical team in this one and that was readily apparent on almost every snap.

The second half was more of the same. Prior to their final possession, Texas Southern had not crossed midfield and had three total first downs. They never threatened to score until the final drive when the Owls had emptied their bench, and even then, it was close. Meanwhile, the Rice offense continued to march up and down the field in the final minutes of regulation.

Those final minutes included a 12-minute fourth quarter, a stipulation permitted should both head coaches agree to it. Rice dominated to such a degree that the game was shortened in the college football equivalent of the mercy rule.

The Taji Atkins Show

At least one player refused to check out when the game entered its later stages. True freshman running back Taji Atkins made waves during the offseason and made his debut last week against Sam Houston. On Saturday against Texas Southern, he made his presence felt in a very real way. Atkins scored his first career touchdown on a five-yard plunge in the third quarter.

Atkins wasn’t going to settle for just one cameo, though. Minutes later he exploded through the line, found the corner and accelerated for a 33-yard score.

Atkins carried the ball 11 times for 91 yards, narrowly missing the century mark in just his second career game. Had the field been a few yards longer on that second score, he probably would have gotten there. It seems likely we’ll see a lot more of that from Atkins moving forward.

Clean it up

The impressive showing was only marred, in part, but self-inflicted wounds. Those first two big plays by the special teams, Fresch’s return and the blocked punt, were both erased on penalties. Rice would be flagged eight times for 72 yards. Texas Southern’s only scoring drive was aided by a facemask penalty that put the Tigers in the redzone.

The Texas Southern offense only tallied 87 yards for the game and had 14 total yards before their final drive. Rice came ever so close to spotting their opponent more yards than their defense allowed.

Bloomgren, who is usually quick to pounce on penalties as a straightforward place for his team to get better, was largely dismissive of the calls in this game. “I’ll look forward to seeing those flags that were thrown, watching those players later tonight on the iPad because I’m not sure I completely understand what was called,” he said. If his assumptions are correct, perhaps that bodes well for the future.

It wasn’t just penalties, though. A fumbled snap almost erased a fourth down conversion in the first quarter. Fortunately this time Warner was able to scoop the ball up and slam it in the gut of Connors who plowed straight forward for the first down. Warner was less fortunate a few series later when he hung a ball out to Matt Sykes in a hook route that was intercepted, his third pick of the young season.

When you’re playing an FCS team that entered the game as more than a four-touchdown underdog, you can make mistakes like those.

To be fair, if those were the only mistakes the Owls made in any given game, they’d still be set up for a favorable result, but the best result here is to use those shortcomings as additional growth opportunities. If this is what Rice football can be when they’re good, not great, what does a perfect performance look like? What caliber of opponent can the Owls take down when everything is clicking like it’s supposed to? Next weekend against Houston will afford them an opportunity to test that out.

One for the record books

The kind of thumping Rice football put on Texas Southern was as impressive as it felt. The Owls registered a long list of “firsts since” on Saturday night. Although they won’t be able to add their first shutout since 2020 to the ledger, they did rack up a long list of superlatives. For example,

Rice football’s 69 points were the most scored by the Owls since scoring 77 against North Texas in 2008 and the third most scored in program history.

Rice football held Texas Southern to 49 passing yards, the lowest total for an opponent since holding Army to nine in 2017.

Rice football held Texas Southern to 38 rushing yards, the lowest total for an opponent since holding UTEP to 17 in 2017.

It was the first 300+ yard rushing game for Rice football since 2021.

As for individual accolades, Tyson Flowers and Marcus Williams each registered their first career interceptions. Taji Atkins had his first career touchdown then added another. Enoch Gota made his first two field goals. Backup quarterback Drew Devillier made his Rice debut as did a few others. The starters were out of the game by the midpoint of the third quarter. That’s how this kind of game is supposed to go.

The gaudy numbers aren’t going to the Owls’ heads just yet. Safety Tyson Flowers, who helped contribute to the beatdown, offered a levelheaded assessment of where this team stands right now.

“You want to shut out, right? But at the end of the day we won the game and regardless of them scoring at the end, regardless of us not having the shut out, there’s still plays that we need to improve on all throughout the game,” he said. “That was by no means a flawless game whether we got the shut out or not. There’s stuff that we’re gonna find when we watch the film that we need to correct if we want to continue to have the season that we want to have.”

Exhale and reload

For the casual football fan, this was a snoozer that wasn’t worth turning into beyond a few highlight plays that found their way onto social media. For a Rice football team that entered the season with the expectations they did to win in the way they did, this was expected. To see it transpire a week removed from the Sam Houston State fiasco was essential. More than anything, it sets up a crucial opportunity one week from now against Houston.

The Bayou Bucket currently resides inside the walls of the Brian Patterson Center at South Main. Players, staff and media walk past it daily. It’s become a fixture in the team meeting room. And nobody wants it to leave. Houston — 0-2 after losing to Oklahoma on Saturday night — looks more vulnerable than ever in its humble beginnings under new head coach Willie Fritz.

We’ll get to next week next week, but it’s impossible not to envision how the optics of this season could change with a 2-1 start. The oddsmakers projected Rice to be 2-1 at this point in the year, but nobody would have tabbed that potential sequence of results. This team has always been a bit unpredictable under Bloomgren’s leadership. Why not lean into that chaos and keep the Bucket for at least one more year?

“I’d like to celebrate this one before we talk about Houston anymore, if you don’t mind,” Bloomgren chided after the game. “All jokes aside, I know this team is going to be excited for next week. I think this is going to make us hungrier than ever.”

Taking care of business against Texas Southern might just give this team the boost they need to do just that.

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