Former Fresno State linebacker Justin Rice coming back to Mountain West, but not home

When Justin Rice left Fresno State the Bulldogs weren’t going to play a fall football season, and maybe not play a season at all. There was a COVID-19 cloud hanging over the program and a 2020 season in the Mountain West, so the preseason defensive player of the year in the conference left for Arkansas State as a graduate transfer, trying to get in that full season to bolster his NFL prospects.

And, he had a big year. Rice led the nation with 18.5 tackles for loss, was ranked 14th with 1.68 TFLs per game.

But rather than jump into the NFL Draft pool, Rice, heeding NFL evaluations, is on the move again to get another season, a full season of college football to boost his pro potential.

He is heading back to the Mountain West Conference at Utah State, and that raised the ire of some Bulldogs fans on social media. A sampling:

• Good luck on a 1 win team next season! As a Bulldog Fan, this makes no sense to me. I get why you left the first time, but not coming back to where it all started makes no damn sense to me.
• That is a huge slap in the face to @FresnoStateFB @FSAthletics and all of the fans who have supported you. Supported your transfer to Arkansas so you could play this season … Never once said anything negative about any of it. And always had your back!
  
  
• Unless the Bulldogs wouldn’t take you back, which I can’t imagine, that’s pretty messed up. I understood the first move, but this is not good. No loyalty today. SMH

Rice gets it – “When you don’t see the full picture, you don’t really know what’s going on behind the scenes,” he said. “You just take it with a grain of salt and move on.”

Why not return to Fresno State?

Rice said that when he went back into the NCAA transfer portal after the season, he never heard from the Bulldogs. Fresno State already is in a scholarship crunch with a number of seniors taking advantage of eligibility relief that was granted by the NCAA to all fall sports student-athletes and returning for another season.

The linebackers position also is full, and adding a graduate transfer to the group would impact the balance between classes within the position group for several years.

“I definitely would have wanted to go back to Fresno State,” said Rice, a Valley product who played his high school football at Modesto Central Catholic. “My guys are still there. I just didn’t really hear from them when I was in the transfer portal, so that was the end of that I guess.

“I assumed it was because maybe they had guys coming back and it was scholarships. That made sense. It’s a crazy year. Getting seniors back, I assumed they wouldn’t have enough scholarships to bring in a transfer so I understood where they were at, if that was the reasoning.”

That was not an issue at Utah State, which hired Arkansas State coach Blake Anderson in December. “He told me if I needed a spot, he understood what I was looking for,” Rice said. “He said if I needed a spot, ‘I’ll take you and you know that.’ We have a really good relationship. It was a really good fit.”

Rice on Tuesday will fly from California back to Jonesboro, Arkansas., where he will pick up his car and hit the road for Logan, Utah. It’s about 1,500 miles, 21 hours or so, but once there he will meet back up with Anderson and get a full spring and a full summer in the Aggies program, neither of which he had last season with the Bulldogs before his transfer or the Red Wolves after it.

Rice out to improve NFL stock

When Rice landed at Arkansas State, he had just one week of fall camp to learn as much he could about its 3-3-5 scheme before the season-opener at Memphis.

He got off to a slow start, but the following week had 3.0 tackles for loss in a win at Kansas State, then 2.5 in a loss at Coastal Carolina, which would enter the Top 25 two weeks later.

“It was tough, for sure, but my goal at the end of the day is to play at the next level and I feel like in order to play at the next level you need to be able to be dropped into a certain situation, a different situation, and just be able to play,” Rice said. “It definitely was a learning experience for that, and that’s really what I want to do.”

But at Utah State, Rice will go into 2021 with a base in the Aggies’ defense and with a chance to add to a resume that includes a 112-tackle season at Fresno State in 2019 with 8.0 tackles for loss and 3.0 sacks and first-team all-conference selections in the Mountain West and Sun Belt conferences the past two seasons.

The Aggies in 2021 are scheduled to play Washington State and BYU in non-conference games, as well as Mountain Division games within the conference against Boise State, Wyoming, Colorado State.

Fresno State and Utah State played the past two seasons in cross-divisional games, and do not play in 2021.

“I got a bunch of evaluations back saying that if I get bigger and stronger and if I play another full year it can only help me,” Rice said. “That’s where my head was at with (the decision to return for another college season). I got those evaluations saying the more time I can work on myself the better. That’s what I took into account.

“This will give me another year to work on the things that I know I need to work on and focus on and that definitely can only help me in the long run.”

This story was originally published January 12, 2021 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Former Fresno State linebacker Justin Rice coming back to Mountain West, but not home."