Three pleasant surprises, two areas still of concern and one prediction after two games …

THREE PLEASANT SURPRISES

We were asked for surprise one each, good or bad, on offense, defense and special teams on a recent appearance on The Huge Show, and (unfortunately) dwelled on the negative a bit. We said we were surprised junior running back Chris Evans wasn’t more heavily involved in the offense, that redshirt kicker Quinn Nordin hadn’t been more consistent (he’s only missed one, but we’d heard he had his ups and downs in practice) and talked about Brad Hawkins’ emergence as a positive.

Given more thought, and from a positive angle, we’d answer like this:

Brandon Watson (defense). Last spring, corners coach Mike Zordich lauded Ambry Thomas as someone who could step up if junior corner Lavert Hill was too banged up to play. It was somewhat of a challenge to Hill to step up, but Thomas was really showing out.