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Rice Football 2022 Defensive Newcomer of the Year: Chris Conti

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One of the few transfer additions on defense, linebacker Chris Conti quickly became a mainstay and our 2022 Rice Football Defensive Newcomer of the Year.

Rice football received commitments from two transfer linebackers from the Transfer Portal last winter. The hope, at least among the coaching staff, was that both would play meaningful roles for the Owls this coming season and beyond. But only one of them made it to campus and thus, though unspoken, a heaping mantle of expectations was unconsciously placed upon his shoulders.

Fortunately for everyone, Chris Conti had wide shoulders and was ready for the challenge.

The Rutgers transfer was a late addition to the portal, finding mutual interest from the Owls early on. By the time he announced his commitment, spring football was winding down. He didn’t arrived on campus until workouts in the summer, putting him behind the proverbial eight ball when it came to learning and mastering the Owls’ defensive schemes. That never seemed to phase him, though.

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Defensive Coordinator Brian Smith referred to Conti as someone with “starting ability” in the days leading up to fall camp, betting on talent that hadn’t seen the field very much at his previous stop. The high school film was exciting, but that had been so long ago.

Conti arrived on campus with three years of eligibility remaining. The hope was always that he’d become a key piece in the Owls’ linebacker room. How quickly that happened was up to him.

As it turned out, it wouldn’t take much time at all. Conti started his first game in a Rice uniform on the road against USC, making four tackles, tied for third-most on the team. From there, the ascent began.

”He’s playing exceptionally well. He’s still getting more and more comfortable with the system every day.” head coach Mike Bloomgren said following Conti’s second game against McNeese State. “I’m not sure he’s where he’ll be three weeks from now.”

Bloomgren did go on to note that the base package Rice deployed against McNeese State was the only reason Conti wasn’t officially listed as a starter in that contest. Bloomgren reiterated Conti had already earned a starting spot and Conti quickly backed up that praise.

Podcast: More superlatives and awards on the Fourth Annual Roosties

He would officially be tabbed as the starter in 11 of 12 games during the 2022 season. He had a season-best 11 tackles against Houston and things started to really click.

“I’ll be honest, I love the culture. I love the guys,” Conti said. “Right when I came they brought me in with open arms and I’ve loved every second of it.”

Conti would reach double digits tackles again a few weeks later against Louisiana Tech. Throughout the year he added four tackles for a loss and one sack. For someone Rice had hoped would become an important piece, he became a key cog for the Rice defense.

After a parade of reliable all-conference caliber linebackers that have passed through the Rice football locker room in recent years, finding someone who could fill those shoes was a daunting task. The Owls found at least one such man in Conti. And fortunately enough, he still has two more seasons of eligibility to make a difference at South Main.

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The Roost Podcast | Ep 136 – Fourth Annual Roosties!

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The 2022 Rice football regular season is over and there’s a bowl game on its way, but first, the fourth annual Roosties Award ceremony is here.

There will be a time for a more formal set of Rice football postseason awards. From Team MVP to newcomers of the year, those awards are coming. First, it’s time to present our more unconventional awards to players, units and general confusion caused by the season as we know it thus far. Stay tuned below for our fourth iteration of the annual Roosties!

You can find previous episodes on the podcast page. For now, give a listen to Episode 136.

Episode Notes

Housekeeping

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Remembering Rice Football with the Roosties! 

Carter and Matthew had out honors in the following categories with some variations along the way and a detour or two. Here are the categories:

  • Favorite Play
  • Player You Were Most Wrong About (Biggest surprise)
  • Most Improved Unit
  • Play/Game You Most Want to Redo
  • Player You’ll Miss the Most
  • Out of Nowhere Star
  • Most Valuable Transfer
  • Most Head Scratching Moment
  • Most Dominant Game
  • Player You’re Most Looking Forward to in 2022

Where can you find us?

Download and subscribe to The Roost Podcast on any of your favorite podcast providers. The show is available on iTunes, GooglePlay, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, TuneIn and PodBean. Please consider leaving a review wherever you listen.

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Rice Football 2021 Team MVP: Jake Bailey

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The glue guy for a revamped offensive attack, Jake Bailey’s consistency and big-play ability led to him being named our 2021 Rice Football Team MVP.

There are countless ways to determine what “most valuable player” actually means. Raw numbers tell one story. Anecdotes and narrative can tell another. Then there’s that feeling on one’s gut. The kind one gets when you just know that one particular player contributes more to his team than one can distill down into one statistic or any singular storyline. For Rice football in 2021, the answer to all of those questions was Jake Bailey.

In modern football, MVP honors seemingly always default to quarterbacks. Rice had four different signal-callers appear in crucial moments this season. Wiley Green won the biggest game. Jake Constantine won the most. Luke McCaffrey and TJ McMahon accounted for perhaps the most improbable comeback.

But the only unifying factor among those four passers was the constant churn. In large part because of injuries, no one player in that room consistently put the team on his back every single week and found ways to will them to victories. Jake Bailey did.

Despite being knocked out of the UTEP game in the second half and missing the finale against Louisiana Tech entirely, Bailey still led all Rice pass-catchers in receiving yardage. He scored twice and had on remarkable endzone grab that would have been a touchdown called back by a questionable penalty. The raw numbers were good, really good.

When those catches game were perhaps even more important. Bailey led all Rice players in third-down receptions (17) and third-down receiving yards (209). He caught five passes on fourth down. All five moved the sticks, including a diving 36-yard stretch on a scramble from Constantine to help Rice mount a fourth-quarter comeback bid.

The Roost Podcast: Third Annual Edition of The Roostie’s Rice Football Awards

It probably shouldn’t be surprising Bailey became the focal point of the Rice offense. Head coach Mike Bloomgren noted Bailey was “becoming somebody the quarterbacks trust completely” in the early portions of fall camp, adding that Bailey was the kind of player that was always “finding a way to get open.”

There was a period of time when the Jake-to-Jake connection between Constantine and Bailey was the most productive dynamic on the entire roster. With Constantine at the controls and the pocket wavering, he’d often roll out and immediately fix his eyes on Bailey, who was seemingly always ready to make a play and move the sticks.

How’d we do? Rice football coverage postseason survey

That almost innate connection is part of what Bailey so effective on the gridiron. “It was never scripted,” Bailey said of one such schoolyard play. “There’s no formula for it, but it’s always great when it can work out and be something big.”

Big might be the perfect word to describe the size at which Bailey played. Standing 5-foot-10, there were only five players on the roster with a listed height shorter than Bailey. Yet Bailey never let that stop him. If anything, his stature aided his quickness and made him just that more difficult to bring down in the open field.

Bailey is one of the most dynamic playmakers Rice football has at its disposal, and the talented wideout still has two more seasons of eligibility remaining. As a redshirt sophomore, he’s taken home our Rice Football Team MVP honors. The rise of Jake Bailey might only be beginning. Those are some lofty expectations, but Bailey says he’s ready to embrace them.

“When there’s pressure in the situation that means you’re doing something important. That means you’re doing something where people have to look at you, expect from you. It’s always a great place to be. I think pressure is a privilege,” he said. Here’s to seeing where that pressure leads him in 2022 and beyond.

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Rice Football 2021 Offensive Player of the Year: Jordan Myers

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Positionless, yet irreplaceable. Swiss-army man Jordan Myers was an obvious selection for our 2021 Rice Football Offensive Player of the Year.

The disjointed 2020 COVID-19 season was riddled with quirks and oddities of one kind and another. Among the most peculiar tidbits from the strange season was the number one. Rice football scored one rushing touchdown in their abbreviated five-game season, and it wasn’t scored by a running back. Sort of.

At that point in his career, Jordan Myers was still listed as a tight end on the official roster. Utilized as the short-yardage and goal line back and other similar situations in 2020, that designation would slowly morph. He worked almost exclusively with the running backs in the spring and was listed atop the depth chart entering the 2021 season.

When asked exactly what position he played during preseason media availability, Myers just shrugged. “Pretty much just wherever the team needs me,” he said. “As of right now, I’m kinda labeled as the utility player.”

Utility player is a destination occasionally reserved for that extra player on the bench of a traditional baseball team. He’s probably not good enough to be your everyday starter, but if you need a backup across the board, he can fill in sparingly well enough.

The Roost Podcast: Third Annual Edition of The Roostie’s Rice Football Awards

Head coach Mike Bloomgren would refer to him often as the team’s “swiss army knife”  ostensibly implying a similar level of versatility. Myers never really seemed to mind what terms were being tossed around regarding his position. He just showed up.

Myers saw sparse action in the Owls’ final four games of the season as he battled injuries and Ari Broussard took over the workhorse duties in the backfield.

Even though he missed a good chunk of time, he still finished the year with more plays from scrimmage than any other skill player on the roster. He led Rice with eight rushing touchdowns and added one more through the air. He and Cedric Patterson were the only Owls to find paydirt more than three times in 12 games. That tandem accounted for 16 of the team’s 35 touchdowns, just shy of 50 percent.

Myers rocketed up those stat sheets with a career game in Week 4 against Texas Southern. Rice football was in desperate need of a boost entering the game, having scored a combined 24 points in their first three non-conference games, all losses.

Not only did Myers show up, he rushed for 160 yards and four touchdowns and caught four passes for 48 yards. The combined 208 all-purpose yards would have ranked in the top seven among all Owls’ season totals. Myers got there in four quarters.

Bloomgren was understandably beaming in the postgame sessions following that big day. “He is exactly what I want our team to be. He is the perfect college football player in so many ways,” he said, delivering the quintessential complement every ballplayer hopes his coach will someday refrain. And honestly, it’s hard to argue with Bloomgren’s pronouncement.

How’d we do? Rice football coverage postseason survey

“He’s probably too smart to ever get into coaching, but I’d hire him the moment he did,” Bloomgren added next. Whether he goes into coaching or finds something else to apply his abilities to after a lengthy collegiate career, Myers curious combination of excellent and versatility have seemingly shown no bounds.

But despite all of the praise and the accolades he received over the course of his six-year career, Myers remains the same calm, humble guy from Dickinson, Texas that signed with Rice football prior to the arrival of this current coaching staff. “I’m just happy I can be someone the guys can lean on,” he murmured following his spectacular game against Texas Southern.

By the time he hung up his cleats, Myers had graduated from being labeled as simply a utility player. He was someone Rice could count — and did count on — in the most crucial moments. Myers was the man handed the football on fourth and short and asked to find a yard. More often than not, he did.

No Myers, wasn’t just a jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none. He was a dude, and an easy selection for our 2021 Rice Football Offensive Player of the Year.

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Rice Football 2021 Special Teams Players of the Year: Sean Fresch, Juma Otoviano

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Returners Sean Fresch and Juma Otoviano were the brightest spots on special teams and our pick for Rice Football Special Teams Players of the year.

Encouraging moments from the Rice football special teams unit were few and far between this season. After ranking near the top of the nation in special teams efficiency over the early years of Mike Bloomgren’s tenure, the Owls hit a rough patch. The kicking game struggled. The punt team was more or less just okay. Coverage was solid, but it was the return game that created the biggest sparks.

Traditionally, The Roost’s Rice Football Special Teams Player of the Year has been reserved for one standout. Jack Fox, Garrett Grammer and Charlie Mendes were previous honorees. This year, we’ve expanded the award to recognize two individuals, Sean Fresch and Juma Otoviano, who each provided game-changing sparks that set Rice up for success and led to Rice wins.

First, Fresch, who opened the season as the leading punt return man for Rice and was one of the most effective specialists Rice has had in that space in a decade. Fresch returned 10 punts this year for 99 yards, averaging 9.9 yards per return. That exceeded the best marks of Austin Trammell, a staple at the punt return spot for Rice in recent years.

In fact, you have to go all the way back to 2011 when Mario Hull. who returned 16 punts for 163 yards, posted a better average per return (10.2) than Fresch did this season.

The consistent ability to gain yardage on returns was encouraging, but Fresch flashed a growing maturity in his understanding of when not to return kicks, too. He developed a knack for luring defenders away from balls booted toward the endzone, feigning a fair catch as the punt rolled harmlessly past the endline for a touchback.

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It was Fresch’s final return of the 2021 Rice football season that stands out the most. Trailing Louisiana Tech 31-28, Fresch stood at the Rice 34-yard line to receive a booming kick from Tech’s Cesar Barajas. Fresch made the first guy miss and turned on the jets, racing past a sea of Bulldogs to the Louisiana Tech 18-yard line, for a 48-yard return. Rice would score the game-winning touchdown four plays later.

“We’re been waiting for one of those the whole season. pretty much.” Fresch said. “I made the first couple of guys miss and then I had to just follow behind my blockers at that point. It just gets easier after you make the first couple of guys miss. It was just open grass from there.”

Down to their fourth quarterback of the year, with less than 90 seconds on the clock, the short field provided by Fresch and the return game was absolutely crucial to the come-from-behind victory.

Fresch also played a role on kick-off returns, averaging 22.6 yards per return. He was joined by Juma Otoviano, who averaged 22.4 yards per return. That tandem combined for 28 of the 30 kick returns Rice had this season. It was on a kick-off return where Otoviano delivered his defining moment.

How’d we do? Rice football coverage postseason survey

Otoviano had fallen down the running back depth chart this season and taken over scout team duties with an injury to freshman running back Christian Francisco. He had one carry and zero returns through the Owls’ first six games of the season. But his hard work behind the scenes had been noticed. That’s why he was the man who stood on the edge of the endzone and received the opening kickoff at UAB.

Otoviano reached up, secured the ball and took off. He would finally be brought down 50 yards later right at the midfield stripe. That burst sparked an eruption on the Rice bench and spurred the offense onto a 50-yard scoring drive to put Rice in front of the defending conference champions.

Starting fast was incredibly important for Rice football in 2021. More often than not, when they’d fallen behind, it signaled another loss. That’s part of what made this return so impactful. It put Rice in the driver’s seat for their most impressive win of the year. Otoviano became a mainstay on kick returns from that point onward.

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