After what many will call two disappointing losses in consecutive National Championship games, we are set to begin another season. Fortunately, we loss few people to the NFL draft. I am anxiously waiting to see the team get out and play and even more anxious about the upcoming USC game. Here are my top things to watch (in no particularly order): 1.) Beanie Wells at 100%. Coaches have been saying that at times last year he was playing only at 70% health. I shutter to think what he'll be like running completely healthy. It'll also be great to have InSaine thrown into the mix as a nice change up. Hopefully Mo Wells will stop falling down as soon as someone touches him. 2) Don't Bend It Like Boeckman. It seemed late in the season that Boeckman forced the ball into the middle of the field into double coverage. That burned us quite a bit. I remember hearing him say that it's the receiver's job to come down with the ball in those situations. Not only does that throw another player under the bus, there's no ownership on Boeckman's part. What about checking down to someone else? How does this make Boeckman a leader to follow? I really hope that he's been working on his technique for these situations. From what I hear about the Spring game, he was making the same mistakes... If he hasn't improved, there'll be way too much pressure to throw Joe Bauserman or Terrelle Pryor into the mix. 3. Who'll emerge as the next deep pass threat? I love Robo and Hartline. They are both quality possession receivers. I do seem to remember though that they weren't exactly burning the LSU DB's. We really needed Small to step up last year. Hopefully this year, Small, Sanzenbacher and/or Devier Posey will step up as legit deep ball receivers. This will only make Robo and Hartline so much better. 4. Will the D line step it up? Yes, we had the best defense in the country last year, but the interior of the D Line seemed to not be penetrating and/or forcing turnovers. We have the same group returning this year and hopefully, with experience, we'll have improved play by this bunch. The rest of the defense is scary good (provided the DB's stay out of trouble). I really believe one of the keys to beating the likes of USC this year is to pressure their inexperienced backfield. If we can disrupt the USC backfield enough, that'll keep it out of the hands of their WRs. 5. The P factor. Terrelle Pryor is the 3rd McDonalds All American we've recruited in the last 5 years. The other 2 have helped the team immediately upon joining: Ted Ginn and Beanie Wells. Will Terrelle have immediate success? Or will he follow the path of say Ron Curry at UNC? We had some explosiveness when InSaine joined the team, imagine what havoc Terrelle would wreak in the red zone if he can add immediate help. I just saw posted that the initial assessment on Pryor is that he looks similar to the pre-Heisman Troy Smith, eager to run first. He has however done some unbelievable stuff within practice... we won't know until we see him in one of these earlier games.

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