Notre Dame Vs Rice

Rice was the Conference USA champ last year and ended the season 10-4 with a blow out Bowl loss to Mississippi State. By the way, that Rice team would have beaten Temple, Purdue and Rutgers. Located in Texas, they have a lot of that left over talent from that state to put out a competitive football team each year.

On offense they like an up tempo run oriented attack and they do have a dual threat QB Jackson who can run the ball – he’s not that smooth as a passer yet. They have competent RB’s behind a pretty good size OL with a gigantic 5th yr LT Ian Gray 6’8″ 345. He will line up against our true freshman RDE Andrew Trumbetti 6’4″ 250. That will be interesting. I would assume ND will have Jaylon Smith helping Trumbetti in his first collegiate game.

Rice will be able to run the ball if last year is any measure and they do score TD’s in the red zone. How they do against this ND defense and VanGorder will be interesting and good prep game for Michigan.

On defense Rice has 2 quality players in DT Christian Covington 300 lbs who is on the pre season All America watch and someone on our side will have their hands full dealing with him. Rice also has a very good CB in Bryce Callahan so Golson better know who he’s covering and go elsewhere.

We don’t know exactly what we have yet in Golson. Is he ready to explode on the scene? All other positions we have far superior talent than Rice and if the running game is working well, we should wear them down by the 4th quarter. If it’s close at that point start worrying.

I think Rice hangs with ND for 1 1/2 quarters and the half ND is up by 14.

Notre Dame 41 Rice 27