I follow many of the TX teams. Have lots of friends who are or were HS coaches here. Some notes from me and them:
Rice's Record: 3-2 (3-0 @ home)
Wins over Houston in OT, Texas Southern, ECU. Losses to #3 Texas and USF. We'll ignore Texas and FCS Texas Southern from the stats since it'll skew the analysis.
Offense:
As most teams in CFB, they run a pro-style passing offense. And they love to pass. So much so, that it's a completely one dimensional offense. They already have two games this year with 400+ yards passing. 401 vs Houston. 435 vs USF. They are really bad at the run game. 1 yard vs USF (20 attempts). 37 vs ECU (20 attempts). 69 vs Houston (31 attempts). It's not clear if their bad run game is because of philosophy or personnel. Seems like both.
If you had a former P5 starter in JT Daniels (5-star recruit at USC, Georgia, and WV), you would pass a lot too. This team is built on passing. They want a shootout. Lots of spread or empty sets. Lots of play option. You'll always find the QB in shotgun. Expect to see a lot of deep shots. Did I mention they like to pass?
They have a star WR in Luke McCaffrey (yes, youngest brother of Christian McCaffrey) who avgs 18 yards per catch. Their second leading receiver is one of their RBs, Dean Connors. You'll see him motion or spread out a lot, often playing the safety valve, often with play option.
Their o-line is a weakness. Run blocking is a major weakness for them. While they've only given up 9 sacks as a unit, Daniels is constantly scrambling for his life. But his WRs are speedy and can get open. They know their scramble drills. Daniels is a really accurate QB with a good arm. And he's a veteran with over 7000 passing yards in college.
Defense:
They play a 4-3 base, "bend-but-don't-break" style defense. Their strengths are at LBs, specifically (Marcus Williams and Christ Conti) and S (Play Wyatt and Gabriel Taylor). Wyatt is more a hybrid LB/S. Those four account for a third of the team's tackles. They're a savvy, veteran group, having led the team in tackles from the previous year as well.
The other units are avg (d-line) to weak (CBs). Rice gives up 4-5 yards per run. As bad as they are against the run, good passing offenses are their biggest weakness. USF had 435 passing yards (Simmons on USF had 272 receiving yards). Houston had 260 passing yards. ECU had 246. Rice's DBs are prone to big chunk plays.
If Rice's defense wasn't so bad, they could content for the AAC title over Tulsa and Memphis.
Game plan:
After the USU game, where we rushed for 218 yards on 45 attempts, Rice will probably want to use the GAST game plan against us. Stuff the box and make us throw. We should. Not because it's what they want us to do, but because their passing defense is probably their biggest weakness. Could really use a big day from our X receiver, Porter. So a more even mix of running and passing is important. Our offense absolutely has to stay on the field longer than Rice's offense.
I remember Daniels when he was at Georgia. He's pretty good at reading defenses, both man and zone. He's good at finding pre-snap mismatches. Normally, I would say we need to mix up and disguise our defenses. But I don't know if we're at that level yet.
It's going to come down to the d-line putting pressure on Rice's o-line and Daniels. In their last game against ECU, Daniels looked pretty rattled as ECU linemen kept getting into the backfield. He can also be prone to inconsistency in general. Daniels isn't much of a runner, but he's a big QB at 240 lbs and I've seen him break out of a ton of tackles. We definitely have to be very sound on defense. Would like to see some zone and/or delayed blitzes against the Rice o-line. If we can screw up the timing between QB and WR, our chances of winning goes up dramatically.
McCaffery is Daniel's Jacobi Meyers -- the sure-handed guy who always seem to come down with the clutch 3rd down grab. But they also love running him in post routes, so always have a safety over the top on his side of the field and make the other WRs beat you.
Side note:
Will be at the game. Bought a dozen tickets + merch for neutral and football-newbie friends trying to get them to root for UConn as a second or even first team. Would love to see a win. Go Huskies!
