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Rice Owls 2026 Season Preview

American Athletic · Scott Abell, year 2 · 5-8 last season · No. 122 in our FBS ratings

Roster Reset

Scott Abell rebuilds almost from scratch with only 30% production returning, so Jacurri Brown inherits a nearly all-new cast tasked with fixing an offense that managed just 19.1 points a game in 2025.

Brown's Offense of Strangers

Can Jacurri Brown function behind a unit that returns just 32.8% of its production from a year ago? The defense fares no better at 27%, so Brown will not have a shortcut through a shootout, he needs his new pieces to gel fast because Rice has almost no proven help on either side to lean on while he learns the offense.

Owls Chase Six Toss-Ups

Rice's 2026 slate offers almost no margin, with six games sitting in the 32-45% win range against Western Michigan, UTSA, Tulsa, Florida Atlantic, Temple and Army, meaning Scott Abell's second year gets decided by which side of those coin flips falls right. The road trip to Notre Dame is unwinnable on paper and the trips to East Carolina and Fresno State carry the season's lowest odds, but the real bowl math lives in those toss-up matchups rather than the marquee tests. A 4-8 projection with 13% bowl odds reads less like a talent gap and more like a team that needs three or four of those near-even games to break its way.

Abell's Case for Optimism

The 4-8 projection reads like last year's 5-8 with the serial numbers filed off, but the underlying math says Rice was closer to a bowl team than its record showed: a defense that gave up points too cheaply, a minus-4 turnover margin and a 3-1 mark in one-score games are exactly the kind of results that flip the other way in year two under Scott Abell. Jacurri Brown steps in from UCF to run the offense, and if the turnover luck normalizes even a little, this group climbs past 4-8 rather than repeating it. The 16% bowl odds undersell a team that was actually competitive within the American in 2025, and the floor here looks higher than the card suggests.

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Abell's Efficiency Outran the Score

Scott Abell's first record in Houston reads rough, but the underlying numbers argue Rice was sturdier than 5-8 suggests. The offense needed just 15.9 yards per point against a 14.1 league median, while a turnover margin of -4 over 13 games is more bad luck than bad football, both signs the record undersold this group. The one flag is 3-1 in one-score games, a break that rarely repeats, so year two hinges less on close-game magic and more on whether that scoring efficiency carries over.

One Dimensional No More

Rice ran the ball at a top-15 clip (205 yards per game) in 2025 but couldn't throw it (98 yards per game, 135th) or finish drives (3.21 points per scoring opportunity, 114th), which is how a team with that kind of rushing production still scored 19.1 points per game. UCF transfer Jacurri Brown is projected to take over at quarterback, and the entire offensive outlook for 2026 rests on whether he can turn scoring chances into points instead of stalling them. The defense has its own math problem, allowing 32.9 points per game despite 25 sacks, so Rice's path back to relevance runs through Brown fixing the passing game more than anything on that side of the ball.

Rice gutted its quarterback room after Chase Jenkins (1025 yards, 9 TD) and Drew Devillier left, and the fix came through the portal rather than the returning options. Jacurri Brown, a four-star arrival from UCF, takes the first-team reps as the front-runner, with Patrick Crayton Jr. (73 yards, 1 TD, 2 INT) and Lucas Scheerhorn (40 yards) unproven in limited college snaps and true freshman signee Ayden Wilhelm still an unknown quantity. Whoever wins the job inherits an offense that ranked 135th in passing yards per game, so Brown's arm has more room to change Rice's identity than his 97-yard, 1-TD college sample suggests.

Rice ran the ball at a top-15 clip in 2025 despite a broken passing game around it, and Quinton Jackson's 889 yards make him the clear engine of that ground attack heading into Scott Abell's second year. D'Andre Hardeman Jr. and Tyvonn Byars return as proven complements, and the group only has to replace Daelen Alexander's 392 yards rather than a full workhorse, so the depth chart stays intact. Three-star arrivals Dionne Sims, Fisher Leftwich and Justin Powell add bodies to a room that does not need a lead back so much as a passing game that stops making every carry a third-and-long proposition.

Rice's receiving room got a near-total transplant, and it needed one: a passing attack that managed just 98 yards per game through the air (135th) loses its top three producers in Aaron Turner (63 catches, 398 yards, 4 TD), Drayden Dickmann (37 catches, 323 yards, 3 TD) and Tyson Thompson. The answer arrives from Holy Cross in Max Mosey, who caught 50 balls for 490 yards last season and steps in as the clear top target, with Payton Matthews (4 catches, 93 yards on limited looks) the lone proven returning holdover. With four more three-star transfers and freshmen who have no college stats yet, 2026 is a rebuild-on-the-fly year for a passing game that has to climb out of the bottom tier nationally in yards per play just to make the run game matter.

Rice's tight end room produced almost nothing to build on last season, and the numbers around it explain why there was little incentive to throw there: a passing game that managed just 98 yards per game, 135th nationally. James Falk returns with 3 catches for 30 yards, and Jackson DeAtley, Rhys Phillips, Jake Renda and Will Swartz come back with no catches on record, meaning Scott Abell's group is starting from scratch as a receiving threat rather than replacing lost production. Sulphur signee Colten Cole adds a body to the room, but until this offense finds any vertical passing rhythm, the tight ends project as blockers first in a rushing attack that was actually productive at 205 yards per game, 15th nationally.

Rice's ground game actually worked in 2025, cracking 205 yards per game on the ground even as the passing attack cratered to 98 yards a game and the whole offense stalled at 36.8% success rate. Nine linemen are out the door, including Trace Norfleet, Weston Kropp, Cole Morgan, David Stickle and John Long, so Scott Abell is piecing this front together around class-year holdovers like Nate Bledsoe and Peyton Farmer plus a five-man junior college and high school haul led by Marcus Page Jr. and Leyonte Chandler. If that rushing identity survives the turnover, Rice can still move the chains on the ground, but asking five new or unproven pieces to protect a passing game that ranked 135th nationally is the bigger gamble.

Rice loses its two most productive linemen from a defense that already ranked 125th in points allowed, with Tony Anyanwu's 6.5 sacks and Blake Boenisch's 39 tackles both gone. What's left is a group of complementary pieces rather than a proven anchor: Jo Chavez (40 tackles) and Chibby Nwajuaku (2 sacks, 3 TFL) return, but nobody on the roster comes close to replacing Anyanwu's disruption. The fix is quantity over a name, five incoming linemen including edges Seth Clarke and Quincy Tchikou, but asking a class of unproven three-stars to fix a unit that finished 122nd in yards per play allowed is a tall order for year two under Scott Abell.

Rice basically rebuilt this position via the transfer portal after losing its top two tacklers, Andrew Awe (93 tackles, 8.5 TFL) and Ty Morris (79 tackles, 9 TFL), leaving almost no proven production behind. The fix came from Nevada, where Stone Combs (72 tackles, 4.5 TFL) and Austin Harnetiaux (37 tackles) arrive as an instant starting pair with real snaps under their belts, pairing with returnee Cooper King to give the group actual experience. Given a defense that allowed 404 yards per game and ranked 122nd in yards per play allowed, the Nevada duo needs to produce closer to their transfer numbers immediately for this unit to stop bleeding chunk plays.

Rice loses its top four tacklers in the secondary from a group that allowed 240 passing yards per game, and none of the returning defensive backs cracked 25 tackles a year ago. Jerrick Harper and Daveon Hook are the steadiest holdovers, but the rebuild leans heavily on transfers Jamir Benjamin from UCLA and Koa Akui from Sacramento State to bring actual snaps of experience into a room that otherwise lacks it. With Marcus Williams, Peyton Stevenson, Jack Kane and Omari Porter all gone, this unit is being reconstructed from the portal rather than restocked from within.

Enock Gota returns after going 10 of 13 with a 49-yard long in 2025, giving Rice a settled placekicker while the rest of the specialists turn over completely. The punting job now belongs to Kent State transfer Charlie Durkin, who averaged 41.1 yards on 48 punts and replaces Alex Bacchetta's 44.7-yard average. Long snapper is a full rebuild with UCLA transfer Morrow Evans, Tulane transfer Phoenix Derichsweiler and incoming signee Hamilton Sharpe all joining behind center after Wyatt Freeman's departure, with 3-star signee Tommy Bauchiero also brought in at kicker.

Brown Takes Over

Rice waved goodbye to its whole offensive identity, sending out Chase Jenkins (1025 yards, 9 TD), Aaron Turner (63 catches, 398 yards) and Daelen Alexander (392 rushing yards) all at once, and answered by importing UCF's Jacurri Brown to run the offense behind Holy Cross transfer Max Mosey, who arrives with 50 catches and 490 yards already on his résumé. The bigger hole sits on defense, where Andrew Awe (93 tackles, 8.5 TFL) and Tony Anyanwu (63 tackles, 6.5 sacks) are gone, and Scott Abell is patching the front seven with Nevada's Austin Harnetiaux and a wave of lower-impact transfers rather than one clear replacement. With a 104th-ranked class and a defense-heavy portal haul short on proven production, 2026 reads as a season built around Brown finding his footing while the new faces up front simply try to hold the line.

Jacurri Brown at Quarterback

Rice's 5-8 mark actually undersold the roster last season, since Scott Abell's offense scored efficiently and the defense gave up points cheaply, so the 2026 swing factor is whether Jacurri Brown, the UCF transfer projected to start, can hold onto that edge without a friendlier bounce in close games. Brown threw for just 97 yards and one touchdown in his time at UCF, a thin sample he now has to build on behind a backfield that returns Quinton Jackson, D'Andre Hardeman Jr. and Tyvonn Byars. If Brown can run that ground game efficiently instead of forcing throws, Rice keeps the parts of 2025 that were real and sheds the part that was luck.

Home Underachiever

Rice's betting card tells a split story that has nothing to do with talent gaps: on the road the Owls covered 60% of the time, but at home they covered just 29%, going 2-5 against the spread in front of their own crowd. That collapse extends to spots where oddsmakers actually trusted them, as Rice went 1-2 covering as a home favorite. Scott Abell's second year needs to fix whatever is going wrong between the lines at home, because the road version of this team was live money and the home version was not.