Raiders fall to Tidehaven 68-9

The Rice Raiders still find themselves winless after they fell to the Tidehaven Tigers last Friday night.

The Raiders were defeated with a score of 68-9 in a blowout loss on the road to the Tigers.

The Raiders only scored nine points on Friday night while giving up 68 which pretty much drives the nail into the coffin for the season. It’s best to just wash this season down the drain and look ahead to 2026.

The best way to do that is by taking a look at some of the positives this season and there is a good chunk of positives they can take away from this season. The first and probably the biggest is that Kor’Dae Johnson is only in his junior year so the Raiders will have their dual threat quarterback returning next season.

Now Johnson did not play on Friday night as the Raiders opted to go with freshman Kyle Sims, which is not a bad thing at all. With a winless record it’s good that the Raiders are using these final games to plug in some of the underclassmen on their roster into the starting lineup.

It gives them some valuable experiences that they can carry into the next season and let’s not forget. Not too long ago, Johnson was a freshman quarterback for the Raiders at one point as well, so it is good to see the young guns get a shot late in the year.

On top of that Johnson has taken some hard shots in the back field and with the season basically over at this point, he’s earned the rest.

Then, looking at the defensive side of the ball, it was obvious that they were going to struggle this season. They lived and died with their defense last season, but they were also loaded with seniors.

The Raiders defense played surprisingly well this season though; their biggest problem was all the self-inflected wounds. They seemingly always found a way to have a flag thrown on them on key third downs but they will learn from these mistakes and come back stronger next season.

Much like the volleyball team the coach in place is the right person for the job. Brad Dumont has had many successful football teams throughout his career, he knows what it take to be a great football team and he knows how to fix these mistakes, it’s on the team to respond though.

The season is not over in the literal sense for the Raiders though as they have one more game against Van Vleck as they hope to turn nightmares into dreams on Halloween night as they kick off at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 31, on their home field.