A couple of years ago, I was a guest on a podcast with other writers and podcasters covering the American Athletic Conference. This was right after Cincinnati, Houston, and UCF left for the Big 12, so the topic was where the American would go from there. At the end, we all went around the virtual room with our guesses for which schools the conference would invite to replace the defectors. None of us were correct, in part because none of us predicted the league would add six schools. However, there was one thing I did get right: I was the only one who suggested that Rice would be added to the league.
The American had just lost three of its most recognizable brands, and in the Group of Five world, only Army would have carried comparable weight as a replacement. Without obvious one-to-one substitutions, the conference had to consider other criteria. Rice might not seem like an obvious choice; the school has long had internal debates about the role of intercollegiate athletics there. But Rice fit in well with Navy and the private school contingent in the American at the time, and there isn't a university president in the country who wouldn't welcome an association with a school of Rice's caliber. Without a brand out there to move the collective financial needle, adding a school that enhances the conference's academic prestige while maintaining its cultural character isn't a bad way to go.
I'd be lying if I said that was why I mentioned Rice, though. The truth is that I was hoping the American would add them. Of all the schools being discussed as candidates for AAC membership at the time, Rice was the only one with a history with Navy. The two schools first faced each other in 1951, a 21-14 Rice win in Houston in Eddie Erdelatz's second season. The Mids would return the favor in the 1958 Cotton Bowl, winning 20-7 over the Southwest Conference champion Owls behind touchdowns from Joe Tranchini, Harry Hurst, and Ned Oldham. Most of the history, though, came from 1992-2009, when they met nine times. Both schools thought scheduling the other one gave them a chance to win, and the series ended when the scales were tipped after Navy's resurgence. But in the days when Navy pundits would argue that the program should play "like-minded opponents," Exhibit A was often Rice. Seeing the Owls back on the docket is like seeing an old friend. A friend you want to pound into dust, of course, but a friend nonetheless.
And so the Mids and the Owls will resume their on-again, off-again series on Saturday, this time as conference rivals. It's a strange time for both teams, too. Navy is dealing with their first loss of the season after an uncharacteristically sloppy performance against Notre Dame. They are looking to get back on track. Rice, meanwhile, is dealing with the fallout from the firing of their head coach, Mike Bloomgren, on Sunday.
Rice's ousting of Bloomgren is a shock for a university with a reputation for not emphasizing athletics. This is not a school that fires coaches in the middle of the season. Is this a sign of broader change?
Bloomgren inherited a team that won one game the season before he arrived, and his teams have made incremental improvements each year. In his first season, 2018, Rice won two games. The following year, they won three, then four in 2021. In 2022, Rice won five games and went to the LendingTree Bowl thanks to the APR exception for when there aren't enough bowl-eligible teams. Last year, they didn't need the exception; the Owls went 6-6 (including a win over Houston) and earned a spot in the First Responders Bowl. And that was in a new, more challenging conference. The progress was admittedly slow, but it was, in fact, progress. But that trend is unlikely to continue. Rice is 2-6 with games against Navy, Memphis, and USF still to go. The prospect of a losing season was apparently enough, as the euphemism says, to move in a different direction.
I think it's fair to wonder if Rice's membership in the conference was a factor in Bloomgren's dismissal. One of Mike Aresco's primary criteria when assessing potential new members was the school's commitment to winning and investing in athletics. That might seem obvious, but it's a legitimate question for a school with Rice's history. Is firing a coach after eight games a signal to the conference that you mean business? Maybe. It certainly suggests a sense of urgency. I think there are reasonable arguments both for and against the move.
On the one hand, maybe it isn't worth it to dismiss a coach making measurable progress at a program where it is traditionally difficult to win. On the other hand, seven years is longer than most schools would wait for a winning season. Either way, the decision has been made.
What has to be frustrating, both for Bloomgren's supporters and his detractors, is that I don't think the team is as far from last year's standard as their record would indicate. When you watch Rice play, your first impression will almost certainly leave you wondering how this team hasn't won more games. On offense, they play fast and have a quarterback who puts the ball on target. Defensively, they're enormous up front and have a knack for making plays in the backfield. So why are they 2-6 and in the market for a new head coach? The devil, as always, is in the details.
Navy fans are way more familiar with Rice quarterback E.J. Warner than they want to be. A transfer from Temple, Warner threw for 402 yards and 4 TDs against the Mids in their 2023 meeting. He's picked up where he left off at his new school. In Warner's last four starts-- all conference games-- Rice has thrown for 282 yards per game. That's the third-highest number in the American for conference games. It seems encouraging on the surface, but some of the underlying numbers tell a different story. Rice is 119th in the country in third-down conversion percentage at 32.7 percent. In the red zone, they are second to last in the country, scoring only 64 percent of the time. Nobody wants a bend-but-don't-break offense. Turnovers haven't helped; Warner's 10 TDs are offset by nine interceptions. The offense can move the ball, but they've suffered from inconsistent execution.
The theme of the Rice offense is getting the ball out of the quarterback's hands as quickly as possible. This applies to both the running game and the passing game. For Warner, that means a lot of short, high-percentage throws. He has 42 attempts per game in conference play, but his 6.0 yards per attempt aren't enough to put him in the top 100 on the NCAA leaderboard. It's a style for which the roster is well-suited. If you're going to throw short, you need big receivers who can take hits and shield the ball. Rice has two, with tight end Elijah Mojarro (6-4 239) and receiver Matt Sykes (6-4 215). Running back Dean Connors is an all-purpose weapon who averages 101 yards from scrimmage per game. He makes quick, decisive cuts that get the ball out of the backfield in a hurry. His running style would have fit in well with any of the great Navy slotbacks of the last decade. When defenses creep up to stop the short passing game, they have speedy slot receivers to make them pay with tunnel screens.
Rice's offensive approach has its plusses and minuses. On the plus side, it forces defenses to tone down their aggression. Because the ball leaves the quarterback's hands so quickly by design, blitzing doesn't accomplish anything. Pass rushers don't get to the quarterback in time, so all a blitz does is leave more room for receivers to operate. While Warner isn't a runner per se, he does have good mobility and can roll out and extend plays with his legs. Since teams hesitate to bring extra pass rushers, Warner usually has time to throw when Rice takes occasional shots downfield. Rice's offensive line is giving up only .88 sacks per game. That's 10th-best in the country, and even more impressive considering they're in the top 15 in pass attempts.
The downside is that nickel-and-diming your way down the field requires the consistency of an option team, which Rice doesn't have. It only takes one incomplete pass or one off-schedule run to put the offense in a third and long where defenses are less afraid to bring pressure. For all the talk about not Navy not being built for third and long, Rice really isn't. Their third down conversion rate is no fluke. Warner's completion percentage on third and 7-9 to go is only 27.8 percent. On third and 10+, his completion percentage is 84 percent, but that is primarily the result of checkdown throws. Only four of Warner's 16 completions in that situation have resulted in a first down.
In theory, Navy should match up pretty well schematically. Rice's red zone troubles will likely be exacerbated against a Navy defense that excels in the same. The Mids also use a lot of simulated pressure, showing blitz at the snap before dropping different guys in coverage. They mix up who rushes and who drops back, making it difficult for the offensive line to know who to block. This allows them to get pressure even when only rushing four or five players. If Warner has difficulty reading the coverage, that can make him hesitate on his throws. If he hesitates, he'll get sacked. If he throws into coverage he isn't expecting, he'll turn the ball over. Short passing is something the Mids usually handle pretty well.
But that's assuming they learned their lesson from the last time they faced Warner. Temple had a similar offensive style, but the Mids tried to blitz anyway. Warner picked them apart. For a defense that is most in its element when it is aggressive, Rice will force them to be patient. That hasn't always gone very well for Navy this year.
And for all their consistency problems, Rice still feels tantalizingly close to a breakthrough. The Owls missed a last-second field goal that would have given them a win over Charlotte. They blew a lead against UTSA but answered with a game-winning touchdown drive with less than two minutes to play. They had a chance for more late-game heroics against a powerful Tulane team, but a fumble returned for a touchdown thwarted those plans. They lost to UConn with a backup quarterback, but the defense kept the Huskies off the scoreboard until midway through the third quarter and forced two turnovers. Any of these three losses could have been wins if the right bounces went Rice's way.
Rice might be getting closer to putting it all together because they are getting healthier. They've had injuries on offense, especially at receiver and on the offensive line. They'll be healthier against Navy than they have been for most of the year. Rice is also a sneaky popular destination for transfers, especially grad transfers. Their two-deep includes transfers from Cal, Georgia, Florida State, Nebraska, UCLA, Duke, BYU, and Utah, among others. For a player looking to make the most of their education, the prospect of a master's degree from Rice is a huge draw. But as we've mentioned before, transfers can take time to learn how to play with their new teammates, especially on offense. Eight games into the season, perhaps the team is playing more like a team.
Playing like a team hasn't been a problem for the Rice defense this year. They are one of the American's top units, ranking second in the conference in total defense at 324.2 yards per game and 4.9 yards per play. They're fifth in the conference in scoring defense at 25 points per game. They also have a knack for making plays behind the line of scrimmage. The Owls are tenth nationally in TFLs per game and 12th in sacks.
Rice's concern against against Navy is that the Mids' style of offense makes their preferred style of play difficult. As Memphis knows, being overly aggressive against the option can spell disaster. Rice also isn't as stout against the run as the pass, allowing 160 yards per game on the ground. That number is skewed somewhat by the Army game, but the Army game is also the closest comparison we have to this one.
Rice's defense is a base 4-man front, with a hybrid linebacker/safety they call a Viper. This gives them a little flexibility in how they defend the option. Against Army, they started by bringing the Viper up to linebacker level to present an 8-man front, like so:
Rice's secondary played man defense on Army's receivers and running backs. Early on, Army focused on running the fullback up the middle, which started to draw the attention of the deep safety. By getting caught up in traffic, he left his pitch responsibility uncovered.
The man defense put a lot of strain on the secondary as they were simultaneously tasked with run support and not losing their man in coverage. Without safety help in the middle of the field, it created opportunities for Army in the passing game by attacking the shallow safety.
That forced Rice to adjust, switching to an odd front. They still played man defense, but now both safeties lined up with more of a cushion. To create added pressure in the run game, the inside linebackers followed the running back's motion. This left them vulnerable to counter plays. If the backside safety had stuck with his assignment, he might have been able to limit the damage. Instead, he bit on the fullback again. This caused him to take a terrible track to the ball, resulting in a big play.
Rice adjusted again. Now they lined up in a six-man front, still with both safeties deep and playing man. To be disruptive, a linebacker tried to time the snap count and shoot the gap. But with the safeties deep, this just left room for shorter pop passes behind the blitzing linebacker.
Army won comfortably, 37-14.
I think there are a few different takeaways from this. First, most teams that have to play against the option start preparations in the spring and dedicate a period or two to option prep all season. Because stopping the option is so different, coaches don't want a complete shock when game week rolls around. That's a problem if you have to play two option teams and the plan doesn't work in the first game. You won't be able to completely change what you've been practicing for months. In that sense, we'll probably see many of the same things from Rice on Saturday. We'll still see them line up with multiple fronts, but with some adjustments.
Army threw for 120 yards in this game, their third-highest total of the season. They were also limited to 9.2 yards per attempt, their second-lowest. After getting beat deep early on, Rice's safety adjustment left them open to getting picked apart underneath. One change that Rice might make that would fit in the context of what they do is to play more zone, similar to what Notre Dame did last week. They can line up with the same looks but have a playside safety in run support with another in the deep middle of the field. At the very least, it's different from something they know didn't work, and it probably wouldn't take much to implement.
Another takeaway from this game is that, in some ways, Rice's defense was effective. Army was held to a season-low 5.14 yards per carry. The Black Knights hit some big plays, but it took hard work to set them up. But those big plays, along with Army's defense, were the difference in the game, and limiting them should be a priority for the Owls. Along those lines, Rice may consider backing off the linebacker aggression. If stopping the fullback is their priority, it wouldn't be the worst idea just to trust their defensive line. Rice's line features a pair of Peterbuilts at defensive tackle. Izeya Floyd is a 6-2 315-pound redshirt senior, and Blake Boenisch is a year behind him and 6-3 332. The key to getting the fullback started is to get movement from the defensive tackles, and these guys are hard to move. Besides, while Army and Navy do many similar things, they are different. Army is more power-oriented while Navy is more spread. The same fullback-uber-alles approach to defense may not be what Rice's coaches thought when they turned on the Navy film.
A few other wildcards for Saturday could potentially throw all of this out the window. You never know how a team will react to their coach being let go, but they win the following game more often than you'd think. The coaches remaining on the staff have nothing to lose, so the playcalling can be more aggressive. And it's not like seniors will give up on the last few games of their careers. Rice won't suddenly line up in a new offense, but some of their situational playcalling tendencies might change and catch Navy off guard if they aren't careful.
The other wildcard is that there's no guarantee that Warner will even play. He was a game-time decision at UConn last week, but the coaches decided he wasn't ready. His replacement, freshman Drew Devillier, had a rough go of things, throwing for only 88 yards. I expect Warner to play, but half of what I just wrote goes out the window if he doesn't.
There have been a couple of instances this season where fans have wondered, "Is this a trap game?" While they fit the formula, I didn't get that vibe from UAB or Charlotte. To me, this is a trap game. Navy can't afford to let Notre Dame beat them twice. Against the Irish, they tried to do too much, and it led to uncharacteristic mistakes. This week, they can't be so afraid of making a mistake that it slows them down and keeps them from playing their best. Rice is good enough to test Navy as is. It'd be better if the Mids didn't give them any help.
