The Rice Debrief

Last year’s Rice game was weird. This year’s Rice game was… also weird, albeit for different reasons. But at least this year’s weirdness yielded a better result.

The Mids defeated the Owls, 21-13, in another on-and-off rain storm that thankfully did not include lightning. Both Blake Horvath and Alex Tecza topped 100 rushing yards, with Tecza adding another 53 receiving yards. Horvath’s 172 passing yards are the most he’s thrown for this season. MarcAnthony Parker paced the defense with 13 tackles.

This game was set up to serve as a measuring stick for the offense following last year’s performance, and for the most part, the Mids passed the test. In the 2024 matchup between these teams, Navy was limited to 260 total yards of offense. They blew past that number in the second quarter on Saturday on the way to a much more robust (and typical) 455 yards. Anyone who might’ve had a lingering concern that Rice was Drew Cronic‘s kryptonite or something had those fears erased after Navy’s 14-play, 75-yard opening drive.

Rice’s defensive game plan was pretty simple. On each play, they had the linebackers shift to the field. When the ball was in the middle between the hash marks, they still had a “shift” side. On the shift side, the safety would stay back in coverage. On the other side, the safety would come up in run support.

It was a little bit of a surprise that they lined up this way, since it’s similar to what Charlotte did to them. The Mids were similarly unphased. To the shift side, they just ran the triple option. Because the playside safety wasn’t coming up in run support, there was a numbers advantage.

On the other side, the offense would outflank the safety.

This wasn’t easy to do consistently, though. Rice used what was functionally a squeeze-and-scrape. The dive key didn’t truly squeeze the playside tackle, but he did knock him off his path to the inside linebacker, leaving the ILB unblocked.

There were plays where the dive key went so far as to hold the PST to keep him from getting to the inside linebacker, too.

To adjust, the offense turned to the counter trey. At first, they ran it to the shift side, bringing a pulling lineman to kick out the scraping ILB.

They then turned the counter trey into an RPO. One linebacker read the pulling linemen and came up to meet them. The linebacker on the other side read the option and stepped up to defend that. Tecza ran between them.

The tight end came across the field to make a nice block on the third linebacker, who had shifted to the field side.

Navy also adjusted to the scraping ILB by running the belly option. The playside snipe, who usually blocks the playside safety, took the ILB instead. The split end did a two-for-one block, running to the safety and taking the cornerback with him.

This set up a quarterback counter trey with the linebackers and secondary all running along with the motion until Horvath reverse pivots and heads the other way.

That was part of a pattern that lasted the rest of the game, with the Mids running into the shift to get the defense to cheat that way, then running counters once they do. Here’s a counter option into the shift, with the running back blocking the scraping ILB. A few plays later, Navy ran a counter trey, with Tecza outflanking the linebacker who was conditioned to run the other way.

They also ran the midline option with modest success away from the shift.

Eventually, Rice started mixing things up. The backside safety became more aggressive following the play. When that happened, the Mids ran a crossing route the other direction.

Interestingly, the safety actually did a good job in coverage there, but the throw and catch were both perfect.

Then the shift-side safety, who had been sitting back in coverage, started getting more aggressive. When that happened, Navy threw deep again.

The Mids had done a decent job running around the scraping linebacker for most of the game. In the fourth quarter, that linebacker tried getting a head start by coming up to the line of scrimmage. When that happened, the offense ran QB power and cut inside of him.

Navy had plenty of answers for Rice, but that doesn’t mean everything was sunshine and rainbows. The Owls’ defensive line won their fair share of battles. The Mids’ ten penalties were also a season high, and they were costly. Seven of them were on the offense, including four false starts. They were able to overcome some of them, but others were drive killers. Brian Newberry also mentioned in his media Zoom this week that the offense had 45 missed leverage opportunities. Those contributed to Navy’s holding penalties. Rice made some plays, but Navy was far too generous in lending a helping hand.

Defensively, it’s hard to find too much to complain about. We talked in the preview about how the line of scrimmage would be the key to the game for both teams, and the Mids were dominant up front. Rice had only two total yards in the first quarter and were tackled for a loss seven times. Any time Rice lined up in any spread formation, they lost a one-on-one blocking battle. Whenever they tried to run laterally, the play was strung out.

The Owls eventually found success late in the second half by lining up with two tight ends and running power straight ahead. It led to their three scoring drives, which were also their last three drives of the game. But those drives averaged almost 12 plays apiece, and once they were down 21-3, that wasn’t going to cut it. The Mids didn’t want to risk the big play by getting the secondary involved in run support and were content to allow Rice to move down the field 3-4 yards at a time. Rice did convert a pair of third-and-longs, and they gained enough yardage on others to convert their fourth-down attempts. But again, Navy was content with not blitzing on third down to risk exposure to the deep ball. The plan worked.

I suppose there are two ways to look at Saturday’s result. On the one hand, if a team can make the kinds of mistakes that Navy made and still come out on top, that says a lot about how good that team is. On the other hand, there are teams on Navy’s schedule where making those mistakes will get you beaten. One of those teams comes to Annapolis this week.

We’re one-third of the way through the season, and 4-0 is right where we expected the Mids to be. They’ve shown flashes of brilliance. What they need now is consistency as they head into the meat of their schedule.