Rice vs Middle Tennessee Football, 34 – 40, The Quadruple Doink, 10/24/2020

Rice University played MTSU on Saturday at Rice Stadium and the video below pretty much sums up the game for Rice in a nutshell. The game was, for the most part, evenly matched throughout the day; but you know Rice, overthinking a problem is their worst enemy. Overthinking is great for research and publishing papers but does not work so well for football.

In summary, all day the scoring was tit-for-tat; then, the game ends with all even at 34 points. In the first OT session, Rice kicker, Riccitelli, attempts a 40 yard field goal to win the game. The kick looks good at first but ends up with a quadruple doink as you see in the video.

In the second OT session, MTSU wins the game with a 14 yard TD run from quarterback O’Hara. The final score is Rice 34 and MTSU 40.

Team	1st	2nd	3rd	4th	OT	OT	Total
Middle Tennessee	0	14	17	3	0	6	40
Rice	6	7	6	15	0	0	34

In this reporter’s opinion, Rice has tremendous potential. The passing game is not strong; however, it appears that Rice has a secret weapon: Trammell. Trammell has a proven record and lots of experience. Rice finally took advantage of that asset in the 4th quarter with a 20 yard TD pass to Trammell making the game Rice 32, MTSU 31. Trammell had a 48 yard catch on the previous play. For the day, he had 2 touchdowns and a 2 point conversion pass reception right after his 20 yard catch..

The greatest area for improvement on the Rice team is the defensive secondary. In the second quarter, MTSU threw 2 bombs, 80 and 66 yards, for touchdowns. This really put a wrecking ball to the Rice game plan.

One bright spot is Rice running back Juma Otoviano. He only had 84 yards in this game; but, when he gets the ball, he makes things happen. I am going to keep my eyes on this guy.

Rice really needs to utilize Trammell and Otoviano this year, although Trammell does have a history of fumbling returns. He did that in this game too. Nevertheless, Rice should use what works and not overthink this.

I overthink things too. Once I was trying to tighten a wire on my car battery. I had to use two wrenches and spent so much time analyzing the problem, that the wrench slipped from my hands, touched both poles, and created a live circuit through the wrench. Thank God that I let go in time. When you overthink stuff, you get the quadruple doink.