{"id":34400,"date":"2014-06-30T14:00:33","date_gmt":"2014-06-30T19:00:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/?p=34400"},"modified":"2014-06-28T11:54:33","modified_gmt":"2014-06-28T16:54:33","slug":"notre-dame-football-fighting-irish-open-the-season-against-the-rice-owls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/notre-dame-football-fighting-irish-open-the-season-against-the-rice-owls-34400\/","title":{"rendered":"Notre Dame Football: Fighting Irish Open the Season Against the Rice Owls"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rice Owls vs. Notre Dame Fighting Irish<\/strong>
\n Saturday, 8\/30\/14, 3:30 PM EST<\/strong>
\n Opening Point Spread:\u00a0 Notre Dame -20.5<\/strong>
\n Current Betting Line:\u00a0 Notre Dame -20.5<\/strong>
\n Opening Total:\u00a0 N\/A<\/strong>
\n Current Total:\u00a0 N\/A<\/strong>
\n Odds Courtesy of 5Dimes<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
The Notre Dame Fighting Irish are 14-4 SU in their L18 home openers<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Rice hasn\u2019t been in position to reach a bowl games in three consecutive years since 1962, as it looks for its first victory in this matchup in five tries.\u00a0 The Owls are going to be hard pressed in picking up a win, considering they\u2019ve gone 5-17 in road openers, with the five victories coming by an average of five points. \u00a0 Eighth-year head coach David Bailiff will need to find a new signal-caller, but he does welcome back two players that gained 400-plus yards on the ground in 2013.\u00a0 Rice is 7-2 in its last nine non-conference affairs, which can\u2019t be ignored when making your NCAA football picks.<\/p>\n

The Owls will try to control the line of scrimmage with an offensive line that welcomes back 92 career starts, but that group also allowed a sack on 10.7 percent of their snaps in 2013.\u00a0 Rice may not struggle in defending the pass in this affair, but the secondary has some major holes to fill after an extraordinary campaign a year ago, especially with Philip Gaines departure after leading the country with 18 pass breakups.<\/p>\n

Notre Dame has a major reason to be optimistic about the upcoming season, with playmaker Everett Golson returning under center after sitting out a year ago.\u00a0 The Fighting Irish will have one of the best run games in the country, especially if sophomore running back Tarean Folston can build off the 291 yards he gained on the ground in the final three games of a season ago. Fifth-year head coach Brian Kelly will likely keep things vanilla on this side of the ball, as it said goodbye to over 50 percent of its production at the wide receiver position.<\/p>\n

The Fighting Irish will likely take a step back on the defensive end, which is important to consider when looking over the NCAA football lines, as they need to replace two linemen that earned All-America honors two years ago.\u00a0 Notre Dame has talent all over the field, but it faces a very challenging schedule\u2014one that gains strength in Week 2 when hosting the Michigan Wolverines in South Bend.<\/p>\n

Sports bettors will likely play the total, as the UNDER is 35-16-1 in the Fighting Irish\u2019 last 52 games.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t miss out on a winning season and let the college football handicappers at Maddux Sports line your pockets with cash.\u00a0 Long term packages are available now!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rice Owls vs. Notre Dame Fighting Irish Saturday, 8\/30\/14, 3:30 PM EST Opening Point Spread:\u00a0 Notre Dame -20.5 Current Betting Line:\u00a0 Notre Dame -20.5 Opening Total:\u00a0 N\/A Current Total:\u00a0 N\/A Odds Courtesy of 5Dimes Rice hasn\u2019t been in position to reach a bowl games in three consecutive years since 1962, as it looks for its […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":181,"featured_media":7117,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[200,1444],"tags":[7732,8321,1311,5394,8322],"class_list":["post-34400","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-college-football","category-headlines","tag-david-bailiff","tag-everett-golson","tag-notre-dame-fighting-irish","tag-rice-owls","tag-tarean-folston"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34400","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/181"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34400"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34400\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34402,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34400\/revisions\/34402"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7117"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34400"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34400"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34400"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}