This is the first installment of a two-part preview of Southern Utah's 2011 football team. Today we preview the offense. Defense and special teams will be previewed later in the week.

Southern Utah's coaches and players are cautiously optimistic heading into the 2011 season, their final campaign in the Great West Conference before next year's jump to the Big Sky. There are a handful of reasons for that optimism:

1.     The Thunderbirds return 16 starters, including nine on the offensive and six on the defensive side of the ball as well as their placekicker, from the 2010 squad which claimed the school's first GWC championship.

2.     They have nine returning players who earned first-team all-GWC honors last year, including three who were first-team selections by both the coaches and the media. They're also an intelligent bunch, as eight were named academic all-GWC, including five starters and three who were primary reserves at their positions in 2010.

3.     They have two pre-season all-Americans: returning all-conference selections Brad Sorensen, a junior quarterback, and Tyler Osborne, a senior defensive end.

4.     Once again the coaching staff returns intact. Over the last four seasons the team has lost just one full-time coach, so there has been great stability in the staff as the team has continued to improve.

5.     The Thunderbirds head into the season ranked among the nation's top-25 FCS squads by several publications, including 16^th by The Sporting News.

The only things that might temper the team's enthusiasm about the upcoming season are a schedule which includes just four home games, as well as the task of replacing the players lost to graduation - something every school goes through every year.

As far as the schedule goes, while Lamb would undoubtedly rather have at least one additional home game, he likes the way it shapes up. With the opener at South Dakota State - a rising power from the Missouri Valley Conference - he says the team will have a challenge from day one.

"I like the way the schedule lines up," Lamb notes. "It's a good challenge for our guys. The first game is on the road against an established program with a strong winning tradition in a major [FCS] conference, so right from game one I think we have a microcosm of our season.

"If we can't beat good football teams on the road, throughout the season, consistently, then we're going to have a poor win-loss record at the end of the year," he adds. "We can't just win our home games and steal a few road games here and there and have any sort of a season that can be deemed successful by our own standards."

Lamb also notes this is the first time the squad has had the pressure of dealing with being ranked heading into the season.

"We'll find out early in the season if we can live up to the hype. We haven't had to deal with being ranked in the top-25 by most pre-season polls, we haven't had to deal with that in the past.  We haven't had to deal with having an abundance of upper-classmen with returning all-conference honors, that's a new challenge."

After inheriting a team that went 0-11 in 2007, the new staff's challenge was getting the players to believe they could compete with the other teams on the schedule. Last year's team proved to itself that it could play with anyone it played, suffering just one lop-sided loss all year. Now, Lamb points out, the challenge is to avoid overconfidence.

"I don't know if our team's aware of it yet, but our coaching staff is very aware, and we're going to be preaching the message hard, that gone are the days where we have to convince our players that we can compete with anybody. Now the challenge for us to teach our players that any team on our schedule can beat us."

The Thunderbirds open the season Sept. 3, at South Dakota State, then host Sacramento State in the home-opener on Sept. 10. First-time opponent Texas-San Antonio visits SUU on Sept. 17, before the 'Birds head down I-15 for a match-up with UNLV on Sept. 24.

The quest for a second consecutive GWC crown begins at home on Oct. 1, when the Thunderbirds host North Dakota. The team then travels to South Dakota (Oct. 8) and Cal Poly (Oct. 15) for two more conference games before taking a break from GWC play at Weber State on Oct. 22. Southern Utah's final GWC game will be Oct. 29, when UC Davis visits Cedar City.

The team then wraps up the regular season with two road games, traveling to Northern Iowa for a Nov. 12 contest, and to Northern Arizona for a match-up on Nov. 19.

OUTLOOK: OFFENSE

It would be easy to single out Sorensen - the team's second Payton Award Watch List member in as many years (since graduated WR Tysson Poots was so honored last year) - as the offensive key to the team this year, but Lamb also points to the offensive line.

"Maybe the most exciting position for us, as coaches as we enter the season, is the offensive line," Lamb says. "We have all five starters from a season ago returning, but maybe more significantly, there are several players that we feel are good enough to start or have become good enough to start through last spring and the summer."

Sophomore Gavin Farr (6-foot-3, 300 pounds) anchors the unit. As a redshirt freshman, he was named the GWC offensive lineman of the year by the media in 2010. Also returning are guards Zach Brackus (6-5, 325, Jr), and Trevor Schauerhamer (6-5, 324, Sr), and tackles Brandon Beddes (6-5, 312, Sr) and Brock Christensen (6-6, 306). Each of the five earned some kind of all-conference recognition last year, with Farr, Beddes and Schauerhamer earning a spot on both the media and the coaches' squads.

"If there is such thing in football, [Farr] is a self-made man," Lamb says, noting that when he was recruited he was 6-2 and 260 pounds, which is considered undersized for the SUU system. "But he grew to 6-3 and 300 pounds, and although he's still significantly shorter than the other guys, he's more in our mode."

Regardless of his size, he's made an impact. "Almost from day-one on campus he's insisted on being the starting center, and he makes it all go on the offensive line ... he was definitely deserving of the offensive lineman of the year [award] by the media. In my opinion that's an honor that describes him well," Lamb says.

Brackus "has been a solid, quiet leader for us from the time he stepped on campus," Lamb notes. "He's very consistent in what he does, he shows up in a workmanlike fashion for practices and games, and he does just a great job."

Schauerhamer "is a big-bodied guy who has really developed himself as an athlete ... He had a lot of natural size and strength and bulk and then he really worked on what would have been his weakness, and I think on game-day he really shows up as an effective player because of all the hard work he's put in."

Christensen "brings a tremendous passion to the game, and I think that's evidenced by how he's changed his body, from the time he was a high school senior at 190-something pounds to being 310 pounds now and one of the strongest players on our team," Lamb points out. "He's really done a nice job in every way in attacking the work that we've asked him to do and it shows up in his play."

Beddes is "one of our fastest offensive linemen and his commitment through the offseason has been significantly increased over when we first recruited him [from Snow College], so I really think he's going to come close to maximizing his potential this season, based on his work ethic," Lamb says.

In addition to the returning starters, the O-line is bolstered by a handful of players Lamb says the staff feels are good enough to start. That group includes Cody Burgess (6-6, 315, So), Devin Tavana (6-3, 300, Sr), Daron Griffin (6-4, 365, So) and Russell Peterson (6-4, 319, Jr). Peterson has been a spot starter and a reserve at every position except center the past two seasons, while Tavana come to SUU as a junior college all-American out of Snow College last year.

"I would say we have nine veterans with game experience and any of those nine guys could be starters," Lamb says.

Depth will be provided by a handful of young players, including Greg Reid, Eric Chandler, Robert Krotz, Alex Topete and Zac Russell.

If the line is the spot on the offense with the most returning experience, the position with the least would be receiver, Lamb points out. Poots and Fesi Sitake claimed the lion's share of the receptions last season, with Robert Ah Sue getting most of the rest, but all three of those players have graduated, leaving the race for receptions fairly wide open.

Seniors Jared Ursua (5-11, 192) and Myles Crawford-Harris (6-0, 190), sophomore Fatu Moala (6-2, 185) and redshirt freshman Easton Pedersen (6-3, 200) had the edge coming out of spring ball, but a handful of newcomers and JC transfers, including juniors Matt Putnam (6-2, 195) and Mike Clore (6-0, 185), and freshmen Myles Carelock (5-11, 170), Logan Parker (6-4, 205), Josh Smith (5-11, 170) and Brady Measom (5-9, 165), hope to be in the mix as well.

Ursua has "been a guy we think could have been in there ... catching a share of the passes but with the guys ahead of him he just didn't have a lot of opportunities," Lamb says. "Jared's been a guy who has delivered consistently over the last three years when we've asked him to, so we're anxious to see what kind of a leader and producer he's going to grow into."

Moala's game is "a lot like Fesi's. He's very skilled, he can change directions, he's one of these guys where you watch him play pickup basketball, or I'm sure any other sport, whether he's played it or not ... he can be the best guy in the room. He's very skillful."

Pedersen "had a good spring for us. He's really effective in using his big body in man-to-man and short-yardage situations, goal line situations. He was probably our most respected receiver in the spring at creating space for himself."

Crawford-Harris is perhaps the most intriguing of the bunch. Originally a cornerback, who earned a few starts in the defensive backfield as a true freshman, he asked to move to the offensive side of the ball in spring after the cornerback position became a bit crowded. The experiment worked out and now he's battling for the top spot at the X receiver position.

"Myles finished the spring very strong, working with the wide receivers for the first time; he had been a DB and had been a starter in the defensive backfield at times, so it was a risky move for us to move him to receiver, but he asked to do it and we had some other corners who were slightly in front of him - Myles was slated as the starting nickel - and I think he's made a good decision for himself, I think he has a good future at receiver," Lamb notes.

Another position where the team is strong and deep is at running back, where Austin Minefee (5-10, 195, Sr) and Deckar Alexander (5-7, 178, Sr) return after leading the team on the ground the past three seasons. Veterans Brian Wilson (6-0, 210, Jr), Mike Tagliaferri (5-11, 206, So) and Henna Brown (6-0, 225, Jr) are all pushing for playing time as well.

Minefee earned all-GWC honors last season after piling up 1,021 yards and five touchdowns rushing and receiving. He led the team's backs in 2009 as well (544 rushing, 229 receiving yards, 5 TDs), while Alexander was the team's second-most productive back last year with 520 yards and the top back in 2008.

Lamb expects both to be better in their senior seasons.

"Both those guys have had tremendous summers," the coach says. "They already were some of the strongest guys at their position, maybe at our level of football, and now they're even stronger, they're even more fit and ready to go.

"We have an excellent group of running backs behind those guys, and any one of them, in my opinion, have all-conference ability: Brian Wilson, Mike Taliaferri and Henna Brown. So it will be interesting to see how the running back position plays out. There's not going to be any room for a guy protecting his body, not playing full-out 100 percent. If guys can't secure the football consistently ... one or two fumbles could put you out for the season."

At fullback the team has three players, each with his own skill set. Senior Daryl Brown - a team captain - plays a hybrid fullback/tight end/H back role; Dylan Fox, who has played linebacker, offensive line and tight end in addition to excelling on special teams, is the top blocking back; and Lavell Ika has a combination of skills. Jacob Allie, a redshirt sophomore, will provide depth as well.

"Daryl could potentially be in the mix at tailback but certainly will be at fullback, and at tight end, and at the slot receiver position. We use him quite a bit as a wing, kind of a hybrid tight end and fullback spot," Lamb says. "He wasn't recognized as all-conference last year and he wouldn't be, he usually finishes with a handful of catches and a handful of carries and a bunch of blocks, but as far as what we do there's nobody that's more important to our offense than Daryl Brown."

At tight end Abbel Aiono (6-3, 265, Sr) earned honorable mention all-conference honors last year, and Lamb says he is another player who could be poised for a break-out season.

"He's got a little preseason publicity, I think because he's one of the only returning starters in the conference at his position ... and I don't think it's undeserved, I just think potentially this year he could have an exponentially more productive season than he has in the past," Lamb notes. "His speed, his agility, his confidence, everything for him has really improved over a year ago."

Providing depth at the tight end spot will be three players, freshman Anthony Norris (6-4, 195), sophomore Jamison Gann (6-5, 245), a transfer from Colorado State, and junior Chris Haning (6-4, 225).

At quarterback, Sorensen (6-5, 225, Jr) completed 261-of-390 passes for a school-record 3,163 yards and 21 touchdowns last year, earning a unanimous selection as the first-team all-GWC signal caller, and a spot on this year's Payton Award Watch List. He was tabbed by at least one writer at ESPN.com as the top player at the FCS level heading into this season and has been named a pre-season all-American by several publications.

He is the team's first returning starter at the position since Lamb and his staff took over in 2008. After three years of teaching the system to a new starter each season, the staff is elated to have him back.

"This is the first year [this staff] will have a returning starter at quarterback, with Brad, so we're excited about that potential," Lamb points out. "That's going to be important to us, to have that player with some understanding already of how he can operate the offense, because that's what our offense is made to do, to have the quarterback actually have the freedom to make calls at the line of scrimmage and change the play. In the past it's been half a season before we get to that [point]. In the past three years ... I bet there would be a pretty steady progression each season from about mid-year to the end of the year as our quarterback has progressed in his knowledge of the system."

A look at the statistics bears Lamb out, both in total and passing yards as the seasons progressed. Last year, when the team piled up over 400 yards of offense seven times, five of those games came in the second half of the season.  Five of Sorensen's top seven passing yards games also came in the second half of the season, and he didn't have a completion percentage under 64 percent in the final six games.

Sorensen's strengths, according to his coach, are many.

"He's got a really strong, accurate arm," Lamb notes. "He's got the height .... he's really mature, he's got some life experiences, he's a little older, he's got a calm, poised demeanor out on the field, but he's also very competitive."

The team also has several reserve quarterbacks, including redshirt sophomore J.J. Mayer (6-2, 205), sophomore transfer Roman Neville (6-2, 190, Jr) and freshman Brady Arnone (6-3, 190).

"J.J. Mayer comes into the season as the backup," Lamb says. "J.J. did a really nice job in the spring, and because of the person and the work ethic J.J. has, the student he is, a student of the game and an academic student, we have a lot of trust in him."

A native of Utah, Neville prepped at Box Elder High, before spending a season at San Bernardino Valley College, the same school at which Sorensen spent his freshman year. He completed 161-of-267 passes for 2,070 yards and 23 touchdowns last year, earning first-team all-conference honors.