Owls enter new conference with something to prove
Stepping into the American Athletic Conference media day event for the first time this week, Rice coach Mike Bloomgren couldn’t be shocked if some in attendance weren’t too familiar with the Owls’ standouts.
He was flanked by quarterback JT Daniels, receiver Luke McCaffrey and linebackers Myron Morrison and Josh Pearcy — four veteran players he credits with leading the Owls to an “amazing summer.”
Though Rice has slowly found a trajectory of improvement under Bloomgren, the challenge of being among the group of six Conference USA teams jumping to the AAC is projected to be daunting. When the league’s preseason media poll was released prior to the media day event Tuesday in Arlington, the Owls were projected 12th in the 14-team league.
“My reaction is, ‘Eh, they haven’t seen us. They probably don’t have a great idea of who the heck we are,’ ” Bloomgren said. “They probably don’t know these four guys, if they’re voting us third to last, or whatever the hell it is. I’m not going to overreact to it, I just don’t think they know, and I don’t think that’s where we’ll finish.”
Since Bloomgren took the helm in 2018, Rice has increased its win total by one in each full season, rising from 1-11 in 2017 to 5-8 last year.
The trend hasn’t been enough to snap a streak of eight straight losing years, and in 2023 Rice will face the top three teams in the league’s preseason projections — Tulane, UTSA and SMU — in consecutive weeks. The Owls draw five of the top six teams in the AAC poll.
But seeing the way administration, coaches and players have pushed for incremental progress even without the payoff of instant success, Bloomgren remains confident the Owls can continue the upward trend.
“They’re not trying to get just one more win than last year, I’ll promise you that,” Bloomgren said.
Daniels, the 23-year-old former five-star recruit who played at USC, Georgia and West Virginia before landing at Rice this year, will be key to that effort.
Feeling at home in Rice’s pro style system, Daniels “prepares like a coach” and “can make every freakin’ throw,” Bloomgren said.
“The real reason to be excited about this football team is the players,” Bloomgren said. “It’s a talented roster that is physically mature, and you see mentally mature leaders on both sides.”
After the Owls started five different quarterbacks through the past two seasons, Daniels said he enters the season feeling healthy, offering hope for stability.
“It’s going to make everybody so much better in the long run, having him as a presence and having him to learn from,” McCaffrey said.
Daniels is quick to denigrate his own winding career, referring to the 2023 season as his “13th or 14th” year. He also joked that he’s “played in every conference known to man” and had to “think back to the ‘90s” to recall his tenure at Georgia.
For the first time in his career, Daniels is stepping into a program outside a traditional power conference, without the expectations of recent success that came with his previous stops.
“It doesn’t feel as different as I guess people tend to think it would when you go from USC, to Georgia, to West Virginia, to Rice,” Daniels said. “Depth is different. There’s a little bit of size difference. But how many guys can really play ball doesn’t change much. It feels like another season.”
With McCaffrey leading the bunch, Bloomgren said the Owls boast an improved group of skill players with more speed and length — qualities that “should lend itself to more explosive plays and make us pretty fun to watch.”
In anticipation of the move to the American, Bloomgren said the Owls “positioned ourselves for this opportunity for more than a year,” bolstering the roster with a heralded recruiting class and a handful of transfers who seem poised to make an impact.
Rice opens the season at Texas on Sept. 2, and Bloomgren said the team is “excited about that opportunity.”
“It will be very interesting to see how this year goes,” Bloomgren said. “But the thing I know is our program is in the best shape it’s ever been, and that excites me.”