After a summer of hope, Rice Football spent all its goodwill in an opening night loss to Sam Houston that never seemed as close as the score suggests.
Any illusions of a storybook season on South Main were shattered quickly on Saturday night. Rice football dropped its season opener to a Sam Houston State team the Owls had historically dominated, winning 16 of the 17 previous contests. That history couldn’t save the Owls this time around who fell to 0-1 in their seventh season under head coach Mike Bloomgren.
Bloomgren didn’t hide from the obviously disappointing result. “I apologize to our fans. I thought our game day atmosphere was really good from the first Owl Walk ever to all the things that people outside of this team control,” he said. “They were about as good as they can be and we didn’t do our part tonight.”
Here are a few immediate reactions from the game:
Sputtering from the start
Even with a few key transfers missing, Rice football couldn’t have gotten off to a much worse start to the season. The offensive line was overwhelmed early by the Sam Houston front, putting quarterback EJ Warner under pressure and providing little in the way of running room for the Owls’ backs. The first four Rice drives yielded 10 total yards and a pick-six.
The degree to which a Conference USA defensive line was able to push Rice around was concerning. There wasn’t much time to test the Bearkats downfield, allowing their entire defense to creep in and contributing, at least in part, to that crushing pick-six on the Owls’ third possession.
The defense faired slightly better, but not much. A busted coverage allowed Sam Houston a walk-in 67-yard touchdown. Then, already trailing by two scores, they let Sam Houston nickel and dime them down the field to make the deficit 17-0. A veteran team that was about a 10-point favorite looked shell-shocked before the first-quarter buzzer had ever sounded.
The first play of the second quarter? A missed field goal. Offense, defense and special teams all came out flat. That’s not how this game was supposed to go.walk
Three more quarters would ensue, but the gist of head coach Mike Bloomgren’s postgame synopsis was already begun to take form. “This is a team butt-whipping,” he said, after first crediting Sam Houston’s performance. “They took us out to the woodshed and beat the heck out of us and we’ve got to respond. We can’t put that kind of product on the field ever again.”
A tale of two lines
The defensive lines from both teams earned their keep on Saturday night. Although it was far from a defensive clinic on the Rice side, the pass rush did its job. Rice racked up seven sacks from seven different players. Charlie Looes stepped in for Coleman Coco and looked very much the part, impacting the game from his first series in blue and grey, tying for the team lead with 1.5 tackles for loss.
Sam Houston’s long touchdown passes weren’t slowly developing plays. Both featured quick shots deep downfield in which the Rice defensive back just got beat, either because of a miscommunication in coverage or a lost foot race. It’s hard to put either of those shots on the defensive line, which for the most part, made life extremely hard for quarterback Hunter Watson when he tried to throw the ball.
When the teams switched sides, the same reality was evident. The Sam Houston defensive line dominated a Rice front that was supposed to be revamped, featuring veteran tackles and hand-picked transfers on the interior. The Owls had zero running game and quarterback EJ Warner did almost all of his work under duress.
“Our offensive line, that is not the product we expect to put out there,” Bloomgren assessed.
Sam Houston ranked 124th in the nation in sacks last season. They added a few transfers to beef up the defensive line, but it’s not as if they brought in a bevy of blue chippers headed for the NFL. They sacked Warner two times, registering four official hurries and putting him off his spot too many times to count. A blistering shot in the final minutes of the game had Warner hobbling to the sideline as the Owl faithful held their collective breath.
The degree to which Rice struggled against an opponent that was not as talented on the line as others they fared before suggests this might have more to do with scheme than talent. If so, that’s a silver lining. Scheme can be analyzed and fix from game one to game two. Talent is what it is. Hopefully for the Owls, the first was the culprit on Saturday night.
The EJ Warner of it all
In desperate need of a pulse, EJ Warner took control. The first sparks of life came from two throws down the field, the first to Braylen Walker and the next to Matt Sykes. That drive would stall, but Warner would make a nifty play on the next sequence, throwing across his body as he rolled out to move the chains. He found Kobie Campbell in the endzone three players later to finally get Rice football on the board.
Given the pressure he was working under, Warner faired fairly well in his Rice debut. He completed 27 of 44 passes for 227 yards. He threw one touchdown and two interceptions, although the second was an afterthought with the game result well in hand.
Bloomgen seemed to concur, suggesting not all the fault fell on Warner’s shoulders. “I’m not sure he had time to play like he’s capable of playing,” Bloomgren said.”
Had he not been on the field, things likely would have gone much worse for the home team. We’ve seen what happens to a good team without a quarterback in recent years around South Main. At the very least, Warner showcased himself to be AAC-caliber, not something that can be said for every position on this team right now.
The defense had their gaffes. The running game was non-existent (2.6 yards per carry against a team that allowed 4.3 yards per carry a year ago). Warner and the pass rush were the positives from a night filled with horrors for the hometown crowd.
What it means
This team was talking about contending for a conference championship throughout the offseason and into fall camp. Those aspirations can officially be put on pause until they figure out some glaring issues from their season opener. Was this the seemingly annual hiccup where Rice got beat by an inferior opponent and they’ll be ready to go next week? It’s possible. But there’s not a lot from what we saw on the field Saturday to suggest this team is AAC-ready.
It doesn’t really matter if Sam Houston is improved, and to what degree they’ve progressed in their second season at the FBS level. This game was meant to be the game where the Owls established they’d taken the next step on a long-enduring build. Getting to six wins, or more, starts with winning home games you’re favored in by more than a touchdown. It doesn’t mean the Owls can’t rebound, but they’ve opened the door for questions that wouldn’t have been there if they’d just found a way to mozy to a boring 21-17 win.
The Texas Southern game can’t come soon enough. And fortunately for Rice, Houston looked just as embarrassing in their opening game against UNLV. This season is far from over and there are some manageable games ahead. But if there wasn’t a fire under this team and this coaching staff coming into the year, there’d better be now. Winning every game was never in the cards, but losing like that can’t happen again.
“We’re gonna watch the film. It’s going to suck watching it,” captain Josh Pearcy said after the game. “But, you know, we’ll treat it with that next play mentality and move on the next week.”
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