Following up on a feature I did last season, I will look back on the season in four parts. Let's begin with the positive: pleasant surprises.
1. The punt team. Our special teams under Petercuskie were consistently bad, but this year saw a marked improvement in our punting. Ayers had a very good year -- never clunked anything costly and provided some real boomers when we needed them. He could be all ACC next year. True Freshman Long Snapper Jake Geiser really earned his scholarship and provided good snaps all season. But the biggest surprise of all were the guys on the punt team, especially the gunners. Sele, Ross, Anam, and Smith were all excellent. It was a great use of our speed. How many times did it seem like they were breathing on the return man right when the punt landed? Plus they made good tackles.
2. Herzlich and Albright. These two get grouped together, because they look similar on the field, play with the same passion and are supposedly buddies off the field. We’ve had a few true freshman phenoms before, but I cannot think of recent examples of two guys who came in so relatively under the radar that ended up playing with such maturity.
3. Larry Anam. I have been a huge Anam critic over the years. I felt he was a poor tackler and never really knew what to do on the field. Granted some of that should have been pointed at the coaching. This season he really surprised me. He improved his tackling, layed some huge hits and became a serviceable corner. He also saved two games: Florida State with his game ending INT and Navy. If Larry hadn’t been there to run down those middies, we would have been in a huge hole.
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You give Anam a lot of credit, and some is due, but I think that he was still so hit and miss that it is very difficult to count him as a positive surprise.
He played with this same style last year, just happened to be MORE misses and less hits, but none the less a player who you can't count on to hold his position is tough to credit
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