Rice's Best- Case Scenario Is Being Average. Welcome to the Deadspin 2. Leading up to the college football season kickoff, we will give you previews of the 2. Now, No. 2. 1 Rice. Chances are you, like me, know of Rice. Watch We Go On HIGH Quality Definitons. You know it’s a school, you might know it’s located in Texas (Houston, to be specific), and if you know either of those things, you likely know Rice has a football team. But unless you inexplicably hate the Houston Cougars and every other Texas football team, the Owls really haven’t ever given anyone much of a reason to know anything beyond that. Outside of some recent success, Rice has shuffled about the middle of the national football scene, occasionally stringing together a six- or seven- win season, but otherwise receding back to a perennially sub- .

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Well, no longer, because now the Owls have made the big time, selected by the nation as the No. Although recent performances may contradict that slot, the people have spoken; the path to the playoff (okay, a bowl) is not a hopeless one. Rice head coach David Bailiff has climbed the coaching ranks after he started (on his second go- round in the coaching world) as a grad assistant at his alma mater of Texas State and advanced to head coach after a four- year stay at New Mexico. He sacrificed power for conference quality in 2.

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TCU’s defensive coordinator, impressing the coaching world enough to garner both assistant coach of the year honors and the attention of Rice administrators, who were fresh off losing rising star coach Todd Graham after just one halfway decent season. Since being handed off to Bailiff in 2. Rice has gone 5. 6- 6. Owls put on the field year- to- year. During that span, Rice has made four bowl games, a feat celebrating by Owls fans considering past the one bowl Graham took them to in 2. Rice played in was the 1. Bluebonnet Bowl, a series decommissioned 3.

But occasional success rarely keeps coaches in the business; athletic directors, pressured by the increasing desire to constantly progress their program’s reputation in hope of increasing their profit margins, are looking for sustained success, meaning coaching search agencies are on speed dial for when a program falters. After combining for 1. Owls have yet again entered a rut over the past two years, struggling to piece together a total of eight wins in 2. Now, entering his 1. Bailiff can feel the heat—any time a program issues a press release in November to assure fans that the head coach is safe for now, one can assume the following season is make- or- break. Rice athletic director Joe Karlgaard, in the same way Texas A& M’s AD issued a public warning for Kevin Sumlin, made as much crystal clear when he dropped the following line in the release: “I have made the expectations for 2. Coach.” Now, it’s time to see whether Bailiff’s current group of players can help save his ass.

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Bailiff and offensive coordinator Billy Lynch will take on the task with a green quarterback under center, as redshirt freshman quarterback Sam Glaesmann beat out sophomore slingers Jackson Tyner and J. T. Granato for the starting role, according to the Houston Chronicle. Glaesmann hasn’t taken a live snap since he suited up for his Waco high school team two years back; now, his first college snap will come in Australia against a Pac- 1. Stanford. It’s hard to imagine a tougher situation to log your first start, but considering Glaesmann beat out two guys with (admittedly limited) experience, his three- touchdown spring game performance, and the fact that Bailiff is possibly putting his future in the young man’s hands means there’s probably at least something there. That, or Tyner and Granato looked like a quicker route to unemployment and Bailiff thought, Fuck it, I’ll trust the rookie.

Glaesmann has two things going for him as the head of the Owls offense—while many of them missed time due to injury in 2. Owls have all five offensive linemen back, including two backups boasting starting experience.

Their new quarterback won’t be the only one pleased about this news either, as running back Sam Stewart will step into the starting role after missing five games due to a torn ACL last season; he still racked up 4. Rice will be counting on a strong ground game to help bring Glaesmann along, so having that potential in both the backfield and the big men blocking for it is a plus.

Unfortunately, Stewart and his experienced blockers are about all the good stuff the offense has to offer. Rice lost both starting wideouts and its starting tight end, as well as graduate senior receiver Temi Alaka, who transferred to South Florida. This means Glaesmann will have to develop chemistry with juniors Lance Wright and Parker Smith and sophomore Kylen Granson, receivers that, like him, will be adjusting to life as an every- down Group of Five college football player. That said, the wideouts don’t have much individual pressure on them considering no single Owls receiver topped 5.

If even one wideout manages to do so this season, with a new quarterback projected to be the worst in Conference USA (mainly because nobody’s seen him actually play), that’s enough of a pleasant surprise. New defensive coordinator Brian Stewart’s job will, somehow, be even harder than crafting an offense with no returning skills players—he saves the stress of replacing starters with eight coming back; in return, Stewart has to transform one of the worst defensive units in the nation, which is a year removed from allowing 3. Stewart’s task is a tall one, and one that will almost assuredly not be completed within two or even three years, so it helps, then, that he’ll have a rock of a middle linebacker in senior Emmanuel Ellerbee to lean on in his initial season. Ellerbee was second in the conference in total tackles with 1. The senior linebacker and seven other returning starters spent the summer adjusting to life under a new system, as Stewart’s opted to implement a 3- 4 defense in hopes of placing some more athletic safety- linebacker types on the edges to increase their turnover production after last year’s dreadful performance—the Owls finished dead last in Conference USA with eight total turnovers; they ranked 1. Having a stud in the middle is a spoil, but the fact remains that Stewart, the former DC for the Dallas Cowboys, has eight guys who couldn’t properly execute a shitty 4- 2- 5 defensive system that Bailiff helped perfect at TCU; unless the 3- 4 change unlocks some previously unknown potential and has Rice defenders actually fitting their gaps and not forgetting about the opposing receiver streaking down the sideline, attaining improvement but not actual success seems to be the Owls’s fate for 2. A Guy To Know. Emmanuel Ellerbee is your prototypical senior middle linebacker.

Standing 6- foot- 1 and weighing in at 2. Houston native tackles damn near anything that comes up or across the middle of the field, and like most modern MLBs, he has the speed to go sideline to sideline to hawk down any backs or slot receivers looking to pick up some extra yardage in the flats.

He was Conference USA’s top solo tackler, with 7. This year, the Owls will rely on him to bring along new linebackers like starting MIKE D. J. Green while also putting up the numbers that saved Rice from being No. Can They Make The Playoff? Let’s start small—can Rice win the C- USA West division? Ahead of them are UTEP, North Texas, Southern Miss, UTSA, and Louisiana Tech. Assume UAB is going to be ass in its first year back from the dead.) The La.

Tech Bulldogs won the division last year and appear to be favorited to repeat; the rest of the division is extremely soft, in both terms of teams returning proven talent and being historically reliable. Of course, so is Rice. Given the state of the offense (green quarterback and receivers) as well as the defense (typically more break than bend), the answer to the C- USA West question is probably not.

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