HOUSTON — Sitting in a conference room looking over the field at Rice Stadium on a sunny February afternoon in Houston, Scott Abell willingly admits something few coaches usually would when walking into a new place: the job isn’t normal.
“I don’t think you can always be conventional here,” Abell told CBS Sports. “That doesn’t mean anybody who’s come before me was bad. There’s been a lot of good coaches. But I don’t think you can run a Rice football program like an Alabama or Texas. You just can’t.
“You have to see it differently.”
That theory explains how Abell, a coach who never worked in a FBS program before December, got the Rice job in the first place.
The Owls are a historic program after 111 years but not necessarily successful. They’ve reached 14 bowl games all time, haven’t been ranked in the AP poll since 1961 and can claim only two conference titles post-1960. But they’re winning under Abell. The Owls are 3-1 ahead of a Saturday matchup with Navy (3:30 p.m. ET on CBS Sports Network)
Abell is the first Rice coach since 1967 to win three of his first four games during his debut season.
Inside the rise of Scott Abell’s option attack
Academics are the priority at Rice. It affects admissions and the type of athlete the program recruits, even in the most talent-rich state — and maybe city — in the entire country. So, athletic director Tommy McClelland looked outside the usual list of candidates. He went to Davidson, an academic-first school that does not provide football scholarships, and hired Abell.
Davidson made it onto the national radar because of the success of future NBA superstar Steph Curry. But, for most of the 2000s, the Wildcats were a cellar-dweller in the Pioneer League. When Abell took over the program in 2018, Davidson had won just a single conference game over the previous five seasons.
“You really felt like you were almost starting a new program,” Abell said.
Abell won six games in Year 1. He never recorded a losing record in seven seasons with the Wildcats, including a pair of conference titles. That success was built atop the nation’s best rushing attack; Davidson led the FCS in rushing five times and finished second nationally the other two seasons.
So how does a no-scholarship, moribund program emerge almost immediately as an offensive powerhouse?
The gun option.
“I’m really proud of the consistency, and I think that’s really the secret sauce of the offense,” Abell said. “We don’t necessarily have to have that four- or five-star guy at certain positions to make the offense go, right? It’s a team.”
Abell, a former MLB draft pick of the Kansas City Royals, remembers looking for an edge as a 27-year-old, first-time high school head coach. It was a job nobody else wanted with little in the way of resources and a smaller enrollment than the other schools in his division. So, what did Abell do? He tried to find an advantage — and that led to the option.
It’s a system that can close the talent gap. Abell never was a flexbone coach, the option style that’s dominated at the service academies in recent years. Back in his high school days, Abell watched all the Nebraska and Tom Osborne film he could get his hands on.
Then came the 2009 offseason.
At that time, Abell was the offensive coordinator at Division III Washington Lee. He spent a spring practice at Wofford watching and observing longtime Terriers OC Wade Lane, who was experimenting with some spread-option principles within his flexbone offense.
Lane was flirting with the system. Abell returned to Washington Lee and said to his O-line coach Gavin Colliton: “This is going to be our offense.”
As the years went on Abell added more and more passing and varied run principles to his spread option system. Now, he works almost exclusively out of the shotgun with inside zone runs, zone reads, read triples and even some RPO looks.
Scott Abell’s option scheme powers Rice to strong start
What working out of the shotgun allows Abell to do is recruit quarterbacks like any other program in America. Abell’s offense is run-first, but he’s still going to pass between 18 and 22 times most games. That’s been the reality thus far for Rice. The Owls are averaging 17 passes per game through three weeks. They aren’t throwing for much yardage (102.6 ypg), but it’s incredibly efficient with the team’s 73.6 completion percentage% ranking fourth in the FBS.
And the run game is always there as the efficient foundation of Abell’s offense. Rice ranks fourth nationally with 55.7 rushing attempts per game but carries the ball at an efficient 4.6 yards per attempt. Overall, the Owls rank 15th nationally with 246.3 rushing yards per contest.
It’s a combination of option rushing principles with spread passing that’s allowed Rice to win, especially when paired with a blitz-happy defense that ranks 39th nationally in yards allowed per play.
“It’s not that different,” Abell said of his offense working out of the shotgun. “We’ve been able to attract quarterbacks who fit our system but really good quarterbacks overall. I’m not really looking for an option quarterback.”
Rice isn’t the first team in the modern era to run an option-based system outside of the service academies. Jamey Chadwell incorporates a ton of option principles into his offenses at Liberty, a system Abell said is comparable to his.
But Abell might be the first head coach since Georgia Tech’s Paul Johnson to outwardly own the option on the FBS level for a non-academy team.
There might not be a better place than Rice to try it.
Rice already attracts a different sort of academic-focused athlete. It also, because of some academic restrictions, rarely can compete with other FBS programs in recruiting. Rice has only twice finished better than ninth in its conference recruiting rankings over the last decade.
Abell’s now twice navigated academic-focused programs and taken them to conference championships. If anything, he has a more even playing field at Rice than he did at Davidson or Washington Lee, schools that did not offer athletic scholarships.
It’s why Abell said “there’s no reason” Rice shouldn’t compete for a conference championship during his tenure.
That goal — Abell’s program mantra is “win everything” — starts with the option, a journey that will continue Saturday against Navy, one of the few teams in the FBS that lives and breathes the option every day like Abell’s teams have for over a decade.
“How can we win more football games?” Abell said. “That’s what it’s about. I think anyone with a commitment and a knowledge base to back up that commitment has a shot. That’s where my knowledge comes from. For us, I don’t think anyone understands read zone, read zone triple, read zone RPO more than we do and is more committed.”
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