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Owls offense shut out for first time since 2000 in loss to UAB

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Rice football dropped their Week 7 home contest to the UAB Blazers as the Owls’ offense was muted for the second week in a row and the defense surrendered a few big plays.

A week removed from a 3-point performance against UTSA the Owls’ offensive struggles continued against UAB. Things got worse against UAB. Rice football was shut out for the first since they lost 37-0 against No. 11 TCU in 2000, a span of 210 games.

Head coach Mike Bloomgren and his staff will once again be forced pick up the pieces after another disheartening loss which dropped the Owls to 1-6 overall and 0-3 in CUSA play. Here are some initial reactions from the loss.

1. The secondary is still getting beat deep

The UTSA game will more than likely prove to be the highwater mark for the season for the Rice secondary. That’s not to say this unit won’t have more days, but holding any team to under 50 yards passing is an extremely rare feat. Even knowing this week would more than likely feature a higher yardage total, the results were still frustrating.

Justin Bickham and Brandon Douglas-Dotson were both beat down the field for long touchdown passes. The secondary as a whole allowed several UAB receivers to get behind the last line of defense and were fortunate to some degree that they were either overthrown or not targeted.

The defense allowed 274 yards through the air and two passing touchdowns. Both were improvements from their season averages coming into the game, but each number could have been better … or much worse. Needless to say there will be plenty of film to watch and things to be corrected from this game. That goes for the front seven as well, who were equally unproductive against the run.

2. The offensive line remains out of sync

The offensive line is Mike Bloomgren’s area of expertise. Before being elevated to the offensive coordinator position at Stanford he was the offensive line coach and run game coordinator for the Cardinal. He has proven success in the trenches, but thus far the offensive line at Rice hasn’t been able to gel.

After hearing rumblings of potential changes throughout the week, Rice started the game with true freshman Jake Syptak at left tackle in place of Ozuma Osuji who had started the Owls’ previous six games. Joining him were Jack Greene, Shea Baker, Joseph Dill and Sam Pierce.

With just under seven minutes to play in the first quarter Rice found themselves in fourth and one. They went to the jumbo package, with all 11 players jammed into the middle. Jordan Meyers got the carry and went nowhere, turning the ball over on downs. That’s the kind of situation that Bloomgren lives for making it equally frustrating when the result was a short loss.

The unit struggled with pass protection too. UAB picked up three sacks and two quarterback hurries. Shawn Stankavage and Evan Marshman were decent when each had time to throw, averaging 10.5 yards per completion with a few nice balls thrown downfield by each of them. If the line does not improve the offense is not going to get much better.

3. Creative playcalling not enough to jump start the offense

Don’t miss the forest for the trees here. Offensive plays that pick up big yardage aren’t automatically “good play calling” and plays that result in negative results aren’t “bad play calling”. First and foremost, the Owls have an execution issue. Poor execution renders any sort of playcalling futile.

After a dismal offensive performance against UTSA the Rice offense needed some kind of spark. Credit is due to offensive coordinator Jerry Mack and the rest of coaching staff for coming up with some new wrinkles to add to the Owls’ repertoire on Saturday. The execution wasn’t there, not just on the new looks, but on the basic fundamentals of this offense.

Freshman running back Juma Otoviano saw his first action of the season, coming in as the Owls’ wildcat quarterback and picking up a few yards on the ground. Rice also incorporated a shovel pass, some creative reads and just about everything but the kitchen sink.

It’s clear that this offense is stuck in neutral and needs to figure out how to move the ball consistently. They didn’t find the answer against UAB, just like they didn’t figure things out against UTSA. There are a host of plays that the offensive staff is going to want back, but poor execution is just as much to blame as the playcalling, if not more so. The execution was so spotty on Saturday that even the better play calls fell flat.

4. It’s time to talk about the quarterbacks

The head coach and the quarterback get too much credit when a team wins and too much blame when the team loses. That’s never going to change, but it’s important to make a distinction between individual performances and collective offensive issues when evaluating quarterback play.

With that disclaimer, here are the stat lines for the Rice quarterbacks against UAB:

  • Stankavage: 7-for-12, 79 yards
  • Marshman: 6-for-16, 57 yards

All of the Rice quarterbacks spent as much time under duress as they did looking down the field. The fear of the oncoming pass rush was noticeable for Stankavage, who looked uncomfortable in the pocket from the start of this game.

It was another game in which Stankavage wasn’t awful, but didn’t show the same growth in the offense as he did early in this season. He just hasn’t progressed enough as a passer. That, combined with a struggling offense, had opened the door for someone else to take the reigns on offense. Bloomgren’s hand was forced, though, as Stankavage left this game in the first half before returning to the sideline with his left foot in a boot.

5. Final thoughts

It’s not fun to lose. Rice fans know that as well as anyone else in the country, and so does Bloomgren. If Rice wanted to try and catch lightning in a bottle with an up-and-coming coach they could have gone that route in the hiring process. Instead, they opted for Bloomgren. Someone who’s had tremendous amounts of success and recruited extremely well. He has a plan, a great coaching staff and he’s building for the long term.

Recruiting is just as much a part of a new coaching staff as installing an offense, defense and special teams. The talent at Rice needs to get better for the Owls to compete, and the coaching staff needs to continue to grow as well. Those aren’t mutually exclusive, and they’re not things that happen overnight. Grow pains hurt. They’re not fun, just like Saturday wasn’t fun, but they’re a part of the process.

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Both sides of the ball struggle as Owls fall to Wake Forest on the road

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Rice football dropped their fourth consecutive contest, falling on the road to an explosive Wake Forest squad. Where do the Owls go from here?

Wake Forest scored early and poured it on. Before Rice could catch their breath they were trailing big on the road and the game was out of reach. This wasn’t the prettiest game from either side of the ball. There will be plenty to address in the film room and on the practice field next week before the Owls return to conference play at home against UTSA in Week 5.

Here are a few things that were most evident from the Owls decisive defeat against Wake Forest:

1. This time, the final score almost really does tell the full story

There’s so much more to any one result than can be told be a simple box score. Wins and losses are the statistics that carry the most weight, but how the game was won or loss is just as meaningful when evaluating the result. In this case, it doesn’t require a look much deeper than the 56-24 result to understand the chasm that stood between these two teams on Saturday.

Short of an upset the likes of which Rice fans haven’t seen in quite some time, Wake Forest besting the Owls at home wasn’t an outlandish notion. The Owls’ players knew this would be one of the toughest tests they’d face all season, but the mentality entering the game was centered around the team’s own effort and mindset.

A non-conference win over a Power 5 opponent would have been monumental for the future trajectory of this program, but a loss didn’t need to be another heavy blow to a program that had shown so much progress early in the season. Rice had three losses entering this game, but their defeat at the hands of the Demon Deacons stung as much if not more than the other three losses. You didn’t need to watch this one to feel the magnitude of the defeat.

2. The secondary

The back end of the Rice defense has struggled early on this season. Even though they gave up a sizable chunk of yardage against Southern Miss, they tightened up their defense against big plays. After allowing five combined touchdowns of 30+ yards in their games against Houston and Hawaii, Rice didn’t allow any scores against Southern Miss.

Greg Dortch and Wake Forest erased that four-quarter streak, quickly. Wake Forest quarterback Sam Hartman connected with Dortch on a 57-yard bomb to kick off the scoring. Dortch already had four steps on several members of the Rice secondary by the time he had hauled in the pass and proceeded to turn on the afterburners and race the remainder of the distance to the endzone.

The ACC’s leading receiver entering the game, Dortch padded his stats against Rice. He scored three touchdowns in the first half, finishing with 163 yards on 11 catches and four touchdowns. Part of what made him so effective was Wake Forest’s effectiveness on the ground. Cade Carney kept the offense on schedule, opening up holes in the secondary as they tried to key in on the offensive backfield.

Dortch is a burner. As much as the Owls tried to keep pace, they weren’t able to stay with him step for step in the open field. That’s not a new concern for this defense. They won’t face many more pass catchers as talented as Dortch this season, but that doesn’t make the problem go away.

3. The offense

Rice tallied three three-and-outs, three offensive yards and three punts in their first three possessions. The offense was rather dismal before Austin Walter jump-started the first touchdown drive of the game early in the third quarter. Thanks to two big plays from the versatile running back, Rice went 72 yards in three plays before Walter took into the endzone on a shovel pass from Shawn Stankavage.

Before that the drive chart was bleak: punt, punt, punt, interception, field goal, fumble, missed field goal, punt. The offensive line wasn’t opening up holes, Stankavage was pressing and the receivers weren’t finding much separation. When one unit did their job, the other pieces let them down. The inability to play fundamentally sound football with any level of synchronization was frustrating, and it showed.

The silver lining was do-it-all ball carrier Austin Walter. When the offense gets stuck in the mud he’s proven he can be the guy that flips the field with one big play. His decisive running style and ability to make a quick cut and explode down the field turned a stalled offense into one that was able to move the ball down the field. He finished the afternoon with 256 all-purpose yards.

For the Owls, Walter’s heroics were too-little, too-late. They were playing catch up all day and had let the deficit grow too large to overcome.

4. Where do the Owls go from here?

This result was ugly. In what felt like the blink of an eye the Owls found themselves in a four-touchdown deficit with no momentum and issues on both sides of the ball. Rice trailed by as many as 25 points to Southern Miss. They fell behind further against Wake Forest, with the 28-0 hole representing their largest deficit of the season so far. Then the gap grew to 35-3 then 42-3 before topping out at 56-10.

When head coach Mike Bloomgren stands in front of the media next he’s going to say a few things that he has to say. He’ll lament the effort against Wake Forest, which he should. He’ll talk about the process, which he should. And then he’ll get back to work on Monday and get to work.

In no way is this rough outing a reason for anyone to jump ship. In fact, it might be the perfect time to buy stock in the Bloomgren era of Rice football. After the 1-0 start, they’ve suffered four straight defeats of increasing levels of frustration.

They’re not going to pack it in. Instead, there will be changes on both sides of scrimmage. Starters will be challenged for their roles and every player is going to have to solidify their claim to being on the field. The fallout from this defeat is where the culture of the program will be tested. If the team can push through, and I expect they will, brighter days are ahead for Rice football.

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Owls fall short on the road against Southern Miss

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Rice football was unable to get into a rhythem on offense and fell on the road to Southern Miss in their first conference game of the season.

The Owls fell behind early, surrendering their first touchdown of the game on the first play following a Shawn Stankavage interception. Southern Miss quarterback Jack Abraham hit Quez Watkins to give the Eagles a 10-0 lead. Rice was in comeback mode after that.

No strangers to a deficit, Rice battled back. They scored two touchdowns of their own in the first half, cutting the deficit to 17-15 before Southern Miss stretched the lead to 24-15 in the final minutes before the break.

The second half was all Southern Miss who put up points in all four quarters, extending the lead as far as 25 points, an insurmountable amount for an offense that couldn’t manage to find its footing on the road.

Here are three quick takeaways from the Owls’ 40-22 loss to Southern Miss in Week 4.

1. Austin Walter and Emmanuel Esukpa need to touch the ball as much as possible

The Rice offense is going to build their offense from the ground up. The Owls have some playmakers on the outside, but the engine that makes this unit run well is their rushing attack. The combination of Esukpa’s power between the tackles and Walter’s shiftiness out of the backfield creates a thunder-and-lightning duo that continues to give the Owls’ opponents fits.

Esukpa faced a lot of stacked boxes against Southern Miss. That didn’t deter offense coordinator Jerry Mack from sticking to the gameplan. Esukpa got plenty of early work, pounding up the middle and wearing out the Southern Miss defense. That tired defense struggled did them no favors against the Owls’ quicker players on the edge.

Walter is the Owls’ home run threat. I called for a long touchdown play from him this week, and he delivered in the opening minutes of the first quarter, scampering around the edge for a 62-yard score. He’s one of the best athletes the Owls have on their roster. When he’s in space he creates mismatches which lead to opportunities for big plays.

Walter hit a big play against Southern Miss, accounting for nearly half of the Owls’ first half offense with a single carry. He provides a dimension for this offense that nobody else does, making him one of the most important players to feed. So far, the Owls have done just that and it’s paid off handsomely.

Esukpa and Walter combined for 156 yards and a touchdown on 25 touches. They’re the 1A and 1B in this offense, and that’s not going to change any time soon.

2. Mike Bloomgren’s willingness to roll the dice is going to pay off

The second touchdown of Mike Bloomgren’s head coaching career was followed with a completely unexpected 2-point conversion attempt. The try was unsuccessful, ultimately putting the Owls behind the eight ball against Prairie View A&M. They got the two points back on a safety and went on to win the game.

That wasn’t the last time we’d see Bloomgren take a chance, and he’s proven to be more than willing to take risks this season. The Owls went for two on their first touchdown against Southern Miss, catching the Eagles flat-footed and walking into the endzone untouched.

Rice isn’t going to have the talent advantage against many of the teams they’ll face this season. Helmet on helmet and pad on pad, the Owls are going to be overmatched more often than they’d like to be. But you can beat talent with risk, specifically with calculated risk. That’s one of the reasons Rice has attempted six fourth down conversions so far this season, converting three times.

Playing it safe isn’t going to pay off for the Owls. They need to be willing to take push the envelope. Sometimes those risks are going to end poorly, but when things do go the right way this team will find itself in position for big wins.

3. Incremental progress

There are no moral victories in college football, at least not if you’re a head coach. Mike Bloomgren has preached about trusting the process and taking the next step all season. So far, that progress has been evident.

As the season progresses, Rice continues to go further and further into games and push their opponents to the wire. They’re giving up less huge plays and making a few of their own. Those baby steps on Saturday were evident in the Owls’ secondary.

After being beaten up by Houston and Hawaii, Rice took their lumps through the air against Southern Miss, too. Unlike their first two games, Rice wasn’t found flat-footed over the top nearly as often. Southern Miss quarterback Abraham did a good portion of his damage across the middle and in front of the safeties.

When Rice did get beat on the outside, they were beaten on contested passes and bad angles. That will show through in the film and give this unit some confidence as they enter the heart of conference play. It wasn’t an acceptable performance by any means, but the issues on Saturday were correctable.

The box score is ugly; Rice surrendered 428 yards through the air. But there weren’t any 50+ yard touchdowns. That alone is a sign things are moving in the right direction.

4. Incremental regression

It wasn’t all good news for Rice football against Southern Miss. The Owls’ offense demonstrated the potential shortfalls that come with a rushing-based attack when it doesn’t win first down. Rice gained more than three yards on their first play of the drive just once in the first half — a 12 play, 59-yard touchdown drive to cut the deficit to two points.

The second half was more of the same. Behind the chains and off schedule, quarterback Shawn Stankavage was put into high-leverage situations and too many third and longs. Rice runs the ball to set up the pass. Keeping defenses honest and utilizing play action is important to this offense. When that’s not working things can go downhill, fast.

Rice went three-and-out four times against Southern Miss, not including a pair of drives that ended after three plays with a Stankavage interception.

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Owls show promise in loss to Houston Cougars

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Coming into the game as massive underdogs, Rice football gave the Houston Cougars a tough test giving fans reasons for optimism despite the loss.

Rice entered their Week 1 tilt against Houston with a feeling of anticipation. This team didn’t care that they were being cast as the underdog and had lost to Houston last year 38-3. In front of the home crowd at Rice Stadium, the Owls held a two-game winning streak. They gave Houston all they could handle on Saturday.

The Owls came out firing and punched the unsuspecting Cougars in the mouth early. Houston was not ready for an aerial attack, but that’s what they got from head coach Mike Bloomgren and his staff. Rice took a 24-17 lead into halftime, stretching the lead to 10 points in the third quarter. Rice couldn’t keep up the pace, falling to Houston by a final score of 45-27.

A few of the biggest takeaways from the 2018 edition of the Bayou Bucket:

1. Rice made the jump

During his postgame press conference following the team’s Week 0 win over Prairie View Coach Bloomgren was emphatic about the leap his team needed to take during the week. He said the best teams he’s ever been a part of make the biggest jump from game one to game two. The quality of competition was significantly higher this weekend, but the Owls’ own progress was evident.

On defense, the Rice defensive line looked strong through the first half, limiting Houston to 94 yards rushing, 51 of which came on a reverse. Early on Houston couldn’t get into a rhythm on the ground against a front seven that swarmed to the football. The Owls’ fourth down stop in the second quarter kept the momentum on the Owls’ side and set up a Jack Fox field goal.

Last week Bloomgren specifically put running back Emmanuel Esupka on notice, saying his 173-yard performance against Prairie View was good, but he could do better. Esupka responded with 81 yards on 17 carries against Houston including a career-long 52-yard run to set up the Owls first touchdown of the day. It was tough sledding, but he still managed a respectable 4.8 yards per carry.

Even with Ed Oliver in the middle, Esupka pounded away, fighting through a lot of contact in the trenches. On the whole, the Rice rushing attack did enough to keep the defense honest, opening up passing lanes for Shawn Stankavage who made the defense pay.

2. Rice has a starting quarterback

Rice hasn’t thrown three touchdown passes in a single game since Nov. 19, 2016. Sam Glaesmann, now at wide receiver, led the Owls in touchdown passes last year, completing three over the course of six appearances. Stankavage, after throwing for 43 yards and no touchdowns in the season opener, threw three touchdowns in the first half against Houston.

With the exception of one errant pass that was picked off, Stankavage was accurate for the bulk of the game. He completed 20-of-31 passes for 204 yards and three touchdowns. It was one of the better quarterback performances Rice has seen in quite some time.

As promised, Jackson Tyner did get some game action. He completed one of his two passes for nine yards before Fox blasted his long punt. When the chips were on the table, Bloomgren went back to Stankavage, trusting the graduate transfer from Vanderbilt with the ball in the redzone after Houston’s muffed punt.

The value of having two capable passers became apparent midway through the third quarter. Stankavage exited the game with an injury, forcing Tyner to take over mid-drive. He connected with Austin Walter on a beautiful over the shoulder 36-yard reception on third down to move the chains and keep the offense humming.

It’s pretty clear, assuming he’s healthy, this will be Stankavage’s job to lose. Still, having Tyner on the roster could be huge for this team moving forward. Tyner ended his day with 4-of-8 passing for 88 yards.

3. The secondary needs improvement

Here are the Houston scoring drives by the number of plays, length and time of possession:

  • 7-plays, 36 yards (1:41)
  • 7-plays, 75 yards (2:13)
  • 5-plays, 75 yards (1:19)
  • 3-plays, 75 yards (0:56)
  • 3-plays, 70 yards (0:48)
  • 5-plays, 68 yards (1:48)
  • 5-plays, 71 yards (2:29)

Quarterback D’Eriq King had a field day with the Rice secondary, moving the ball down the field with relative ease. The corners had a rough outing, and the safeties weren’t much better. The speed of the Houston offense is hard to prepare for in practice, and that showed on Saturday.

The Rice defense allowed 320 yards through the air and three passing touchdowns. They had a few nice plays, particularly on passes across the middle, but the homerun ability of guys like Marquez Stevenson and Courtney Lark proved too much for the secondary to handle. This is the second week that the secondary has looked beatable. The Owls have 11 more games on the schedule some of which include high-profile passing attacks.

4. Trust the process

As Joel Embiid says, trust the process. Rice football is two games into the Mike Bloomgren era. Even if all things do go according to plan it’s going to take some time. Coach Bloomgren inherited a roster that needs more talent and is coming off a 1-win season. It’s important to remember the magnitude of the task at hand.

Bloomgren comes to South Main with a pedigree of physicality and toughness, two characteristics that a team doesn’t acquire overnight, over the summer, or over the course of 12 (or 13 in this case) individual games. Rice football isn’t that far removed from a 10-win season and a bowl appearance. You can win at Rice, but the Owls are going to have to be deliberate with the steps they take if they want to become a consistent player in both Conference USA and the national stage.

On Saturday the Owls hung with a team that has more talent than they do. They ran into the jowls of a Houston defensive line that includes a future top-five NFL draft selection and gave the Cougars a scare. The rebuild is on schedule. Regardless of the outcome of this one game. Rice football proved they’re moving in the right direction.

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