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Rice Football: Corner Tyrae Thornton enters Transfer Portal

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Rice Football will have to deal with some attrition in the secondary. Cornerback Tyrae Thornton has entered the Transfer Portal.

The projected two-deep for the Rice football defense looked pretty stout for Rice football entering the 2020 season. The Owls expected to return 20 of their top 22 players. That included 10 starters and 10 backups, losing only defensive tackle Myles Adams (to graduation) and linebacker Anthony Ekpe (to transfer).

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Read more on what the depth chart looks like behind Thornton in the 2020 Rice Football Season Preview.

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Rice Football: 2021 Safety Marcus Williams commits to Owls

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The 2021 Rice Football recruiting class has added another piece to their future secondary, picking up a commitment from safety Marcus Williams.

Two weeks after adding their first safety commit, the 2021 Rice Football recruiting classed doubled their depth at the position. Joshua Williams committed on the last day of July. The newest addition is Hoover, Alabama safety Marcus Williams (unrelated).

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Williams picked Rice over several in-state schools like South Alabama and Troy and more than a dozen other offers. The Owls beat out Kansas and fellow Conference USA schools like Middle Tennessee and Charlotte for his services. He also held offers from Arkansas State, Harvard and Navy.

The addition of Williams will help solidify a 2021 defense that already includes seven commitments. Rice now has a pair of commitments on the defensive line, two at safety and three at linebacker. The offense has four commitments. The class as a whole ranks fourth in Conference USA and 92nd nationally.

If current trends hold, this class is on track to challenge the 2020 class as the highest rated in program history. Neither Marcus or Joshua Williams has been rated by 247 Sports at this time.

More: 2021 Rice Football Recruiting Tracker

Williams can do a lot of different things on the field and was dominant from the outside linebacker position. His athleticism combined with his comfortability in space makes him an ideal candidate for the Viper safety spot in the Rice defense.

A quick look at his highlights below will give you a flavor for how many things the Owls will be able to do with Williams when he suits up in Blue and Gray. He can attack the ballcarrier and position himself for the big play in coverage. His surehandedness in the open field is something no collegiate defense should take for granted.

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The Roost Podcast | Ep. 46 – 2020 Rice Football Defense Preview

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The 2020 Rice Football season has is still scheduled to be played at some point this fall. In this week’s show, the Roost Podcast breaks down the Owls’ defense.

The Extended Offseason hits the defense in the second half of our Rice football team preview this week. We hit the offense last week, spending 90 minutes on pure football for the first time in months. This time Carter and Matthew talk through the entire defense, focusing on potential breakout players, reasons for concern and what they’re paying attention to on this side of the ball.

You can always find previous episodes on the podcast page. For now, give a listen to Episode 46.


Episode 46 Notes

  • Housekeeping — We hit on some takeaways from spring practice in this episode. You can find previous (and future) practice reports and all our recruiting updates on our Premium page, reserved for our Patreon subscribers. Make sure you hit the button and subscribe so you don’t miss what’s happening behind the scenes. As always, thanks to all of you who have followed the show on Twitter and left a review on iTunes. It’s quick, but it makes a difference.

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  • Rice/COVID-19 Updates — There was a lot to cover this week. Rice football has delayed its season until September 26. One Conference USA member has canceled the season and four conferences have shut things down until the spring, at the earliest.
  • Rice football defense preview — Carter and Matthew walk through each position:
    • Defensive line: The depth is a question mark, but getting a full season (of some kind) with a healthy front four should make last season’s production the floor. More pressure is a must.
    • Linebacker: Blaze Alldredge is a stud. Antonio Montero is great too. This one-two punch is among the best in the conference and the strongest positional starters on the team.
    • Safety: Rice has depth, experience and talent at the safety spot. George Nyakwol, Naeem Smith, Treshawn Chamberlain and Prudy Calderon are going to hold things down on the back end again.
    • Corner: The corners took big strides last season with their one-on-one coverage. Tre’shon Devones having a full season as the No. 1 with experience opposite him. Tyrae Thronton is one of the elder statesmen of the secondary who made big strides last fall.

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 Recruiting: New 2021 offers and mid-August update

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Three new offers for the 2021 Rice Football recruiting class went out this week. Who are they and where do the Owls stand?

We’re roughly four months away from the Early Signing Period and the 2021 Rice Football recruiting class is coming along nicely. The Owls picked up their 10th commitment on the final day of July, securing the pledge of safety Joshua Williams.

At that time Rice had offered 56 players. 10 were committed to Rice and 25 were committed elsewhere. Of the 18 uncommitted offers, the Owls are still in the mix in roughly half of those recruitments. It made sense that we’d see a few additional offers come out in August. Rice handed out three in the first week of the new month.

FB Cade Anders – Tifton, GA

Fullbacks don’t grow on trees, so Rice has to be particularly judicious when selecting the right players for such an important position in their offense. Incoming freshman Brian Hibbard is the first freshmen the current staff recruited specifically to play fullback. Anders is the second, and Rice is interested enough to throw their hat in the ring of a committed recruit.

Anders committed to Army on July 31st, the same day Rice added Joshua Williams to the fold. He also holds offers from Charlotte, Georgia Southern, South Alabama and others.

He characterized his commitment to Army as “strong”, stemming primarily from the opportunities the academy presented after football rather than the desire for military service itself. Rice doesn’t offer many committed players. The Owls’ interest, and Anders’ willingness to listen to their overtures, are each significant.

WR MJ Singleton – Lubbock, TX

Getting faster has been a priority for Rice in each of their most recent recruiting classes. We should be able to see the fruits of those efforts the next time the Owls take the field. In the meantime, Rice wants to keep adding to the fold. Lubbock, TX wideout MJ Singleton matches the profile.

Singleton is a track guy that can take the top off the defense. He’s a sprinter who specializes in the 100m and 200m dash. On the football field, the speed makes him a versatile offensive weapon. Cole Kirkpatrick is the other wideout to watch on the Owls’ board right now.

OL Graham Keating – Murfreesboro, TN

Rice has two offensive linemen committed in the 2021 class so far: Ethan Onianwa and Faaeanuu Pepe. They’ll be looking to add at least one more in this cycle, preferably someone who can bolster their depth on the interior.  Graham Keating could be that answer.

He can play tackle, but Rice likes his versatility and believes he’d be a great fit at guard as well. They’re recruiting him out of Murfreesboro, TN, home of Conference USA peer Middle Tennessee. Stealing him away from a conference opponent would be an added boost.

Where #FlightSchool21 stands

247 Sports has the 2021 Rice Football class ranked fourth in Conference USA. Nine of their 10 commits have three star ratings. Joshua Williams has not yet been rated.

Bloomgren’s staff has a pretty strong track record of identifying talent before they get ratings. If Williams does get bumped up to a three star, the Owls will be neck and neck with North Texas for that No. 3 spot. The Mean Green have 11 commits to the Owls’ 10. UTSA is second with 16 commits. FAU leads the way with 27.

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Rice Football: Declining optimism exists for Owls delayed season

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Rice Football took a proactive step to delay the start of its 2020 season, but the future remains as uncertain as ever in the midst of the COVID-19.

On Monday afternoon, Rice football announced the delay of its 2020 season. According to the current plan, that would set the Owls up to begin their 2020 campaign at home against Lamar. The Cardinals reside in the Southland Conference, which could very well fall in line with several other FCS conferences and postpone its season to the spring, at the earliest.

All of those concerns served as a rather bleak backdrop for a conversation with Rice Athletics Director Joe Karlgaard, tasked with explaining the unexplainable and navigating the unprecedented.

“Throughout the summer and up until this point we’ve wanted to do everything that we can to give ourselves the best shot at playing college football this fall,” he said. “We feel like delaying til the end of the month puts us in that position.”

Karlgaard indicated that Rice is still very much so the ultimate decision of whether or not Rice plays football during the fall “day by day.” He went as far as to say “circumstances could change… and that could happen to us and that could happen in a moment’s notice.” Per his own admission, optimism was greater coming out of the spring than it is right now.

For the time being, the plan is for Rice to start the season on September 26 against Lamar and try to fit a home game with Army or Houston in during the Owls’ open week (October 17) or potentially at the end of the regular season, possibly on December 5.

All of those dates seem so far away today in mid-August.

Half joking, half grimly-rooted in our new reality, Karlgaard ended a zoom with local media with a thank you and a promise to keep everyone up to date, signing off with a telling quip: “that could be five minutes from now.”

Sources within the program were equally pessimistic. One put the odds of Rice playing any football this fall at a 4 out of 10. Karlgaard himself said he wasn’t sure what the future holds. In his defense, none of us do.

From a logistical standpoint, Rice is pushing all the right buttons. They’ve been careful and calculated when it comes to there response to a challenging situation. But for now, Rice football and the rest of us will continue to wait.

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