The Rice Owls opened the 2023 football season in familiar territory, hoping to make amends for a brutal defeat from two Septembers ago. In a 2021 meeting with the Texas Longhorns in Austin, the Owls were blanked 58-0, and this time vast improvements were sought.
Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium was not only a venue familiar to tenured Rice players, but also to new quarterback JT Daniels. Now on his fourth program, the journeyman quarterback started prior games in Austin as a member of USC in 2018 and with West Virginia in 2022.
But the third time was not the charm for the Daniels-led Owls.