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Rice Football 2023: Charlotte Game Week Practice Report

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Rice football is in “playoff mode” as they visit Charlotte, two wins away from six with two games to go. Here’s what we learned from the Owls at practice this week.

There was definitely an extra dose of intensity at Rice football practices this week. The Owls said all the right things and seemingly did all the right things in preparation for Charlotte, even as they waded through continued uncertainty at quarterback and a few other key positions.

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This week’s roundup focuses on what the Owls plan to do if Daniels misses another week, a potential adjustment in the backfield and the stated importance of this matchup by several Rice players.

For those checking in for the first time, or those returning, a quick programming note. Special features like this are reserved for our subscribers. Have questions? You can get those answered in our monthly Q&As and get access to all practice notes, recruiting updates and features like this one when you subscribe on Patreon today.

The Plan at Quarterback, again

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Nightmare Third Quarter Dooms Rice Football at UTSA

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Rice Football hung around for a half, but couldn’t finish the job against UTSA, falling to the Roadrunners for the eighth consecutive time.

The first 30 minutes of Saturday night’s AAC matchup in the Alamodome felt like a heavyweight fight. Rice football traded blows with UTSA, matching one of the conference’s few remaining teams that was unbeaten in league play. Then things fell apart.

Suddenly the proverbial clock hit midnight and the Owls turned into a pumpkin, withering in the third quarter in what felt like a winnable game to that point. Here are a few immediate reactions from the game:

The defense brought the heat

Rice football has seen plenty of UTSA quarterback Frank Harris over the past several seasons and they’ve learned a lot of what didn’t work. Harris has gashed Rice through the air and on the ground — and he got his fair share of yardage on Saturday night — but the Owls’ defensive gameplan against him proved effective.

Over and over again, Rice brought pressure in high-leverage situations. On third downs, Harris was met with white-clad Owl jerseys with haste, forcing the veteran passer to make split-second decisions with the football.

The strategy put a heavy burden on the Rice secondary. If the rush didn’t get home, the defensive backs had to make one-on-one plays. For the most part, they did and the Owls’ gameplan gave them a chance. Tack on a few key havoc plays, and Rice was very much so in this game.

UTSA entered the redzone five times, they scored three touchdowns. One of those touchdowns came after the Roadrunners were gifted a free first down on a crucial fourth down play. Rice was all over Harris from the snap, forcing him to break toward the sideline. Michael Larbie came in late and was flagged for a roughing the passer. The call was correct. The play was devastating. UTSA scored three plays later.

It wasn’t a perfect day, but holding Frank Harris to 175 yards and one touchdown and making plays in the redzone was more than sufficient enough to give the Rice offense a chance. Defensive coordinator Brian Smith crafted a solid game plan. Against an elite offense, the defense did their part.

Quarterback quandaries

Turning to their fourth quarterback to see the field in the past eight days, the Rice football offense took a while to show life in this one. AJ Padgett, who drew his first start since the Lending Tree Bowl against Southern Miss, started the game 1-for-4, stepping into a drive-ending sack and overshooting running back Dean Connors on a screen with blockers ready on another third down opportunity.

On the Owls’ third drive, Padgett threw it into an empty area of turf, vacated by a running back cutting back toward the middle of the field and a tight end breaking out. It was clearly a miscommunication, but regardless of the culpable party, it killed another drive.

Every quarterback that takes a snap for the Owls this season will be compared — fairly or not — to the high bar JT Daniels set with this offense. Daniels has showcased an uncanny ability to make plays happen despite adverse conditions. He’s good for a few “did-you-see-what-he-just-did” plays in each game.

There wasn’t much time between the drive Padgett started to settle down and the UTSA defensive line turned into the Monstars, or at least, something frighteningly close. Padgett led the offense on a 22-second touchdown drive to close the half but the second half began with three consecutive three-and-outs.

Head coach Mike Bloomgren said afterward that, for the most part, the offensive line held its own. And while he did lead with the reminder that the quarterback gets too much credit and too much blame, he noted Padgett’s role in the negative plays was not insignificant.

There were moments when it felt like Rice might have won this game had Daniels been on the field, but the final score seems to suggest otherwise.

Offense out of sync

The result of this game swung on the play of the offenses. The Rice offensive line was under duress for most of the night. When you can’t win one-on-one, it’s hard to mount a formidable protection. Free rushers got past Clay Servin on back-to-back plays in the third quarter. On the next drive, Ethan Onianwa was the victim.

“I really want to hesitate to blame this on the line because we got to remember everybody plays a role in protection,” Bloomgren said, including himself in the following summation: “I’m putting this on everybody.”

UTSA led the AAC in sacks coming into this game. They’re a very, very good front. But Rice played good fronts in their past two games and found a way to protect the quarterback and move the football. It’s confounding to see them struggle so mightily in that respect tonight, but it was impossible to overcome.

The Rice defensive line was largely good. They gave up a few chunk gains on plays that were well-blocked by UTSA, but they always bounced back with a tackle for loss or negligible gain to give themselves a chance.

Do or die*

Rice football falls to 4-6 with the loss, two wins away from six and securing bowl eligibility. Their upcoming opponents, Charlotte and FAU, both lost on Saturday as well. They’re certainly very winnable games against much more manageable opponents than the murder’s row of AAC heavyweights Rice has played in the past three weeks.

First and foremost, if Rice football is as good as they’ve given onlookers reason to believe, then they’re better than 4-6 FAU and 3-7 Charlotte. Winning out would put them at .500 in the conference with potentially each of their four losses coming to a bowl-eligible team that finished .500 or better in league play, assuming USF can find one more win down the stretch.

And don’t shoot the messenger, but Rice could very well be in the mix for a bowl berth if they finish with five wins. The latest Action Network projections would have room for Rice in the field based on how things currently stand.

It has certainly not been the season Rice football fans had hoped for nor the year the team itself spoke of following their marquee upset victory over Houston so many weeks ago. But six wins is still on the table. It sure would be nice for all parties involved if they could reach that plateau for the first time in the Bloomgren era.

“This is November and you’ll always remember what happens in November. We’ve said that quote a lot. With that being said, it’s like we’re in playoff football. You win this week, you get another meaningful game,” Bloomgren said in closing.

“This team wants to win. This team is working their butts off to win. There’s a lot of individual performances on this film that are going to be really good, really fun to watch. Team results’ not good enough.”

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Measuring stick games

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Rice Football 2023: UTSA Game Week Practice Report

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Rice football visits UTSA this weekend seeking to snap a losing streak. Here’s what we learned from the Owls at practice this week.

It’s mid-November and we’ve got a situation in the Rice football quarterback room. An unwanted, annual tradition has returned to South Main as the Owls prepare for the possibility of a game without quarterback JT Daniels at the helm.

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This week’s roundup focuses on what the Owls plan to do if Daniels is ruled out, what additional adjustments they’re having to make because of injuries and some closing thoughts on the importance of this matchup.

For those checking in for the first time, or those returning, a quick programming note. Special features like this are reserved for our subscribers. Have questions? You can get those answered in our monthly Q&As and get access to all practice notes, recruiting updates and features like this one when you subscribe on Patreon today.

The Plan at Quarterback

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Rice Football valiant comeback effort falls short against SMU

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Rice Football pushed another AAC heavyweight to the brink on Saturday, but came up short with a backup quarterback, falling to SMU at home.

Down to a true freshman backup quarterback for the entirety of the second half, Rice football hung around and had their chance to knock off SMU, one of the AAC’s three remaining teams to be unbeaten in league play. Chase Jenkins led multiple scoring drives but was picked off in the final minutes as the Owls fell on Homecoming night.

“It’s a win business. And the fun is in the winning and we all know that,” Rice football head coach Mike Bloomgren said in his comments after the game. “They’ve been trained in that way they understand that, but I told them it doesn’t change the fact that I’m incredibly proud of them and how they fought in the second half of this ballgame through a lot of adversity and gave them a chance to win against an incredibly talented football team. That’s something we never could have done in years past.”

Here are a few immediate reactions from the game:

Special teams show out

It’s been a bumpy road for the Rice football special teams this season. Following a particularly disastrous day against UConn, which featured a missed field goal and a muffed punt, head coach Mike Bloomgren delivered a rather confident defense of special teams coordinator Pete Alamar, promising better days.

“What I do know, is we have the best special teams coordinator I’ve ever been around in Pete Alamar and I trust him to fix it,” Bloomgren said that night. “I’ll certainly do everything I can to help him.”

The Owls haven’t kicked many field goals since then and the punting hasn’t been noticeably improved, but Saturday’s start was just about the best showing that phase of the football has had all season. In the span of a few minutes, the Rice special teams accomplished the following: snuffed out a fake punt, kicked a 50-yard punt and finally blocked an SMU punt and returned it for a touchdown.

Rice was never going to have a chance in this game if they didn’t find a way to compete on special teams. That unit gave the Owls a chance. Quinton Jackson added a 44-yard kickoff return. Tim Horn made a fourth quarter field goal. In just about every special teams phase, Rice had success.

Manufacturing an offense

In baseball, there’s a concept of manufacturing runs. When the bats aren’t swatting the ball all over the yard, managers resort to stealing bases, bunts, sac flies and everything else they can scheme up to find a way to get a run. The terminology carries with it the idea of stealing points when you’re not having a banner day on the offensive side.

Onlookers at Rice Stadium witnessed the football equivalent on Saturday night. The Rice offense totaled minus one yard in the first quarter. Quarterback JT Daniels was sacked three times before he registered his third completion of the night and the running game wasn’t working. The SMU defense was overwhelming the Rice line and the offense was stuck.

Yet somehow, Rice went into halftime with 21 points, trailing by just a field goal.

In what has to be one of the most impressive offensive performances we’ve seen at South Main this year, offensive coordinator Marques Tuisosopo was — as the kids say — in his bag. There were tight ends in motion, jet sweeps, reverses, lots of orbit motions and more importantly, extended drives that kept the SMU offense off the field.

If Rice kept everything vanilla, it felt as if the SMU front would have blown them off the field. They dialed up the creativity and pulled out almost every stop. Credit to all parties involved — coaches and players — for finding a way to make this game extremely competitive, starting quarterback or not.

Nights like tonight expose the quality of your scheme. When everything goes wrong, can you still move the ball? Rice was able to do that in very challenging circumstances against the best defense in the conference with a backup quarterback. There are no moral victories, but the coaching staff absolutely carried their weight on Saturday night.

Where’s JT?

So many Rice football seasons under Bloomgren have featured a familiar, painful narrative: quarterback injuries. Even after JT Daniels left the USF game with an ankle injury the Owls felt like they’d escaped the curse when their rugged signal caller returned the following week to play against UConn. The undeniable willpower of No. 18 made this season feel different.

And while the Owls’ season is not anywhere close to finished, watching Daniels view yet another game from the sidelines was a punch to the gut Rice fans had thought they’d put well behind them in the rearview mirror.

Chase Jenkins took the first snap of the third quarter while Daniels was nowhere to be found on the Owls’ sideline. He would later emerge from the Brian Patterson Center and walk down to the field with a ball camp on his head and no helmet in sight. That sight — Daniels alone on the sideline as the offense took the field — was absolutely crushing.

Bloomgren revealed he wasn’t aware Daniels was in any danger of missing time when he entered the locker room at halftime. Daniels was then taken away by team doctors and examined where it was then revealed he did not remember his final drive or the score of the game.

The game could have been over at that point, but Jenkins wasn’t going to roll over. Jenkins finished 10-for-16 with 85 yards passing. He ran the ball four times for 21 yards, including a long of 14 yards. He led multiple scoring drives against an elite SMU defense. You couldn’t have asked for much more from a true freshman backup quarterback who started the season working with the scout team.

Playing on fumes

The secondary entered the game without Marcus Williams or Jojo Jean available. Sean Fresch and Gabe Taylor each spent time on the turf during the game, with Taylor unable to finish the game and Fresch willing the defense to hold together. When logic dictated the defense should be out of gas, they delivered their best moments of the entire game.

Following a touchdown drive by the Mustangs to start the second half, the Rice defense limited SMU to just six points for the remainder of the contest, much of which came when SMU starting quarterback Preston Stone was still in the game.

Bloomgren acknowledged the effort. “The way those guys fought, that’s what it comes down to,” he said. Those guys just fought together and for each other. That’s a beautiful thing. That’s really cool.”

Margin

Earlier in the season, Rice football head coach Mike Bloomgren talked about margin. He talked about this team being talented enough to win games, even when they weren’t having their best day. After Saturday’s result, Rice has itself wrestling with a new kind of margin, the kind that ties directly to bowl eligibility.

Sitting at 4-5, below .500 for the first time this season, Rice now must win two of its final three games to secure six wins and clinch bowl eligibility. They had back-to-back “quality losses” but that doesn’t matter on the final ledger. If they didn’t already, the Owls officially have their backs up against the wall.

When asked whether the team was feeling that pressure, Bloomgren remained resolute. “We talked about UTSA. You know how we’re going to take this,” he said. It’s going to be one [game] at a time. It’s not going to be about margin. It’s not going to be about anything.”

“They all can see big picture. They’re smart kids; they go to Rice, but for us, we’re going to talk about the things that matter and preparing the right way. And what a big win it would be next week in the Alamodome if we can have a great week of practice and find a way to get that thing done.”

Rice has three games left: at UTSA, at Charlotte, vs FAU. They’ve played some really good football in recent weeks, but they’re running out of time to cash in on positive performances that come without a win on the final scoreboard.

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Hold the laundry

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Rice Football 2023: SMU Game Week Practice Report

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Rice football hosts SMU this week in their lone matchup as AAC members. Here’s what we learned from practice this week.

Much was made of the return of the rivalry between Rice football and SMU when Rice announced their move to the AAC, but with SMU departing for the ACC this offseason, the Owls will only get this one crack at the Mustangs before they separate conferences once again. With several Dallas natives on the roster, Rice hopes to make this game count.

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This week’s roundup focuses on adjustments along the defensive line, the emergence of a potential pass-catching weapon for the offense and some thoughts on this very important matchup.

For those checking in for the first time, or those returning, a quick programming note. Special features like this are reserved for our subscribers. Have questions? You can get those answered in our monthly Q&As and get access to all practice notes, recruiting updates and features like this one when you subscribe on Patreon today.

The status of Josh Pearcy

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