There's a plethora of adjectives to describe Harding running back Roderick Smith - beast, force, monster, Adrian Peterson… was beast mentioned?

The 6-foot-3, 214-pound junior touched up the Class 4A Bishop Dwenger Saints for 202 yards and a touchdown on 27 carries on Friday night and drew the praise of Saints coach Chris Svarczkopf.

“Rod Smith is a great football player,” he said. “He's everything they say he is.”

A beast?

Saints safety Tyler Eifert seems to agree. Smith broke away from the defense and was galloping down the sidelines but was caught and pushed out of bounds by Eifert, who angled across the field and dove to get enough of Smith to knock him out of bounds.

Smith ended up with 41 yards and likely would have scored if it wasn't for Eifert.

“You think he's bottled up in the backfield and he just emerges out of nowhere,” Eifert said. “You've got to go up and make the play. He's a big back and hard to bring down. He had a great game.”

Homestead turned heads, including that of yours truly, with its 55-21 thrashing of Huntington North in Week 1.

The Spartans' play inspired thoughts of possibly underrating them as the area's best team, despite them being ranked No. 2 in The News-Sentinel's Power Poll.

Well, so much for that.

Homestead laid an egg in Week 2 at Warsaw, which struggled one week earlier to hold off a Columbia City team that's won a game in each of its past two seasons.

Now the Spartans make you wonder if they were looking ahead to the Week 3 NHC showdown against East Noble. This may be the game that decides who pulls (and stays) ahead in the conference title race.

For the second time in as many weeks, Churubusco's defense has forced seven turnovers in a game, and for the second straight week seven different Eagles forced those turnovers.

That's simply astonishing.

In Week 1, Churubusco scored five touchdowns off those turnovers. They didn't score on defense in Week 2, but intercepted three passes and grabbed four fumbles.

*Norwell is 0-2 for the first time since 1978

*The NHC was 2-1 versus the ACAC in Week 1; the ACAC was 2-1 against the NHC in Week 2. Bellmont was 2-0; Woodlan, New Haven and Heritage were 1-1.