Coming off an incredible, 11-win season in 2018, the Army Black Knights will begin their 2019 season by hosting the Rice Owls. Game time is at 6:00 EST on Friday, August 30, at Michie Stadium in West Point, New York. Fans can catch all of the action on CBS Sports Network.
According to the Week 1 college football odds, the Black Knights are 23.5-point favorites at home. The over/under for the game is 50.5 points.
For Army, it doesn’t get much better than last season. The Cadets went 11-2, including wins over armed forces rivals Air Force and Navy, as well as a bowl win over Houston. Army’s only losses came the first week of the season at Duke and in an overtime game against Oklahoma, who went on to play in the College Football Playoff. The Black Knights were also ranked for the first time since 1996.
It’s hard to imagine things getting any better this season, but anything is possible considering what Jeff Monken has accomplished in his first five seasons at Army. The Black Knights have gone to a bowl game in the last three years, doing so for the first time in school history. They’ve also won all three bowl games and have had back-to-back seasons with at least 10 wins.
Rice, meanwhile, is at the other end of the spectrum. They haven’t been to a bowl game since 2014, winning just 11 games over the last four seasons. David Bailiff was fired following a 1-11 campaign in 2017 and replaced with Mike Bloomgren.
Needless to say, Bloomgren has a huge rebuilding project ahead of him, and it showed last season. The Owls went 2-11 in Bloomgren’s first season at the helm, beating FCS opponent Prairie View A&M by three points in their season opener and losing 11 in a row before beating Old Dominion in the season finale. Only one of those 11 losses came by less than 15 points, and that was an 8-point defeat against fellow bottom-dweller UTEP, so there’s a lot of work left to be done.
These two schools didn’t play last season, but they met in each of the previous four years. Rice won in 2014 and 2015 while Army won the next two matchups, including a 49-12 blowout win in 2017.
To be honest, I don’t like how big this spread is. I like Army, but they struggled in their season opener last year and they could be looking ahead to next week’s nationally televised showdown with Michigan. But I can’t get past how bad Rice looks on paper. It could be another long season for the Owls, so I’ll put my trust in a team that won 11 games last year and lean toward Army to cover.
One reason to believe in Army is that their most important player from last season is back, and that’s quarterback Kelvin Hopkins Jr. Running backs in the Army triple-option can be interchangeable, but having an experienced quarterback in the Army offense is invaluable. He has to make so many split-second decisions, something Hopkins proved capable of doing last season. Hopkins is also a capable passer, becoming the first quarterback in Army history to both run and pass for over 1,000 yards in the same season.
Meanwhile, the Rice defense is a mess, especially up front. It seems like any quality players the Owls had on the defensive line left the program during the offseason. If Rice can’t get a push at the line of scrimmage, it’ll be that much easier for Army to run the triple-option. When you factor in the threat that Hopkins occasionally poses with his arm, the Rice defense is asking for trouble.
I’m not sure how much support the Owls are going to get from their offense. The defense has reportedly dominated the offense during preseason scrimmages and Rice doesn’t appear to have a clear answer in a three-way quarterback competition. Rice was in the bottom-10 nationally last season in points scored, and until they find an answer at quarterback, there’s no reason to think that things will improve in a meaningful way.
On top of that, Army had one of the best defenses in the country last year and returns a lot of key players. Remember, the Black Knights held Oklahoma to just 21 points in regulation last season. The Army secondary is loaded and the Black Knights always have solid linebacker play. The defensive line might be a little undersized, but Rice probably isn’t the kind of team that’s going to push them around.
As long as the Black Knights aren’t looking ahead to Michigan, they should get the better of Rice on both sides of the ball. With Army, you should be able to trust that they’ll be focused and won’t underestimate an opponent. For me, that’s enough to eat the points and lean toward Army to cover the 23.5-point spread.