Rice 38, North Texas 24: What We Learned

[caption id="attachment_18793" align="alignleft" width="300"]Photo by Richard Badillo Photo by Richard Badillo[/caption] Rice improved to 2-1 on the year and got a conference opening victory over North Texas, 38-24 on Saturday. What did we learn about th Owls and the Mean Green in this one? DCTF's Greg Tepper breaks it down.The Rice offensive machine is alive. Now that is exactly what David Bailiff wants his offense to look like. The Owls rang up an astonishing 41:50 in time of possession, running 90 plays to North Texas’ 62. The Owls aren’t very explosive, but then again, they were never designed to be very explosive. Instead, they are relentlessly, brutally efficient — the Owls had drives of 17, 10, 10, 12 and nine plays today, and featured a 370-yard passer (Driphus Jackson), a 100-yard rusher (Jowan Davis) and a 160-yard receiver (Dennis Parks). Combine this with last week’s loss to Texas, and the Owls have run 96 more plays than their opponents, and had a time of possession advantage of 85:52 to 34:08 in two weeks. The Owls’ offense is a German-engineered spirit-breaking machine, and Conference USA had better take notice. The defenses: woof. Neither defensive coordinator will be particularly keen on watching film of this one. North Texas once again struggled to get its opponent off the field — through two games, teams playing the Mean Green are 21-of-34 on third down. Rice again gave up big plays in the passing game against a team that had previously struggled to pass — UNT QB Andrew McNulty looked far more comfortable in this one than against SMU, and it showed, averaging 8.2 yards per attempt against Rice vs. his dismal 3.7 yards per attempt against the Ponies. If there’s a common thread for both teams in this one, it’s that the defenses absolutely have to improve. There are signs of life for North Texas. Early in the second quarter, with North Texas leading 3-0, Rice recovered a muffed punt from North Texas and, three plays later, was in the end zone with a 7-3 lead. Sitting on my couch, I’ll admit that I fully expected the Mean Green to crater from there — after all, their showing against SMU in their opener last week did not inspire much confidence. But instead, North Texas QB Andrew McNulty marched the Mean Green down the field, completing 4 of 5 passes (plus getting a big run from Willie Ivery along the way) and capping it with a 33-yard touchdown strike to Carlos Harris to regain the lead. Yes, North Texas lost; yes, the Mean Green’s defense has major issues; and yes, there’s still lots of work to do all-around in Denton. But at least we saw signs of life from the Mean Green, which is a promising sign for the remainder of the season.