The Thanks­giv­ing turkey has yet to be devoured and Black Fri­day is still a few days away, but Col­orado quar­ter­back Sam Noy­er used some unex­pect­ed time off last week to get a Christ­mas tree set up in his apartment.

“My mom was like, ‘You’re prob­a­bly not gonna be home for Christ­mas this year, so why don’t you go get a Christ­mas tree and set every­thing up,’” Noy­er said Mon­day dur­ing a vir­tu­al press con­fer­ence. “So, I went out and did that this weekend.”

Yet anoth­er exam­ple of Noy­er being pre­pared this fall.

The senior has been excep­tion­al dur­ing his first two games as a starter, throw­ing for 512 yards and three touch­downs and rush­ing for 100 yards and three scores for the Buffs (2–0). Noy­er and CU vis­it No. 19 South­ern Cal­i­for­nia on Sat­ur­day (1:36 p.m. MST, TV: ABC) and he’s not relax­ing because of his hot start.

“You can nev­er get too com­fort­able being in this posi­tion,” he said. “Any day can change. I play bad next week and there’s the pos­si­bil­i­ty of Tyler com­ing in.”

Noy­er and junior Tyler Lytle bat­tled for the job in pre­sea­son camp, and coach­es said the com­pe­ti­tion was excep­tion­al­ly close. For Noy­er to keep the job, he’s got to con­tin­ue to play well, he said.

“I’ve got to have the mind­set of just tak­ing it day by day and get­ting bet­ter each day,” he said. “I can’t get com­fort­able, like I said, because if I get too com­fort­able then some things can hap­pen and I don’t want that to hap­pen. I’ve got to pre­pare just like I pre­pared from day one since I stepped foot back on the team.”

Part of Noyer’s suc­cess so far has come from his aggres­sive run­ning style, includ­ing a few times when he’s tried to leap over defend­ers. He said hav­ing last week off — after Ari­zona State had to can­cel the game because of COVID-19 issues — helped his body rest.

“Real­ly all of us, I think it helps just to get our bod­ies back right, but over­all I think my body’s doing real­ly well,” he said.

While Noy­er has said he needs to be smarter in avoid­ing con­tact — and head coach Karl Dor­rell agrees — he added that human nature will be tough to contain.

“When the adrenaline’s flow­ing, I just kind of react,” he said. “I prob­a­bly shouldn’t be as air­borne as I have been, but if I need that first down, I’m gonna go get it and I think that’s some­thing you’re going to con­tin­ue to see.”

In addi­tion to rest­ing, Noy­er said last week was ben­e­fi­cial as the Buffs go into a big matchup with the Tro­jans. USC and Col­orado are the only unde­feat­ed teams in the Pac-12 South division.

“I think it gave us extra time to pre­pare for a great SC team and I think guys took each day as a new oppor­tu­ni­ty to pre­pare and get bet­ter,” Noy­er said. “I don’t think that guys real­ly took a step back. I think a lot of peo­ple can take a step back in those type of sit­u­a­tions but I think our team has han­dled it real­ly well and I think Coach Dor­rell has done a great job of han­dling the entire sit­u­a­tion well. I think over­all we did a good job of prepar­ing and now we’re back on to a real game and we’re ready to go.”

Noy­er cred­its his rela­tion­ship with offen­sive coor­di­na­tor Dar­rin Chi­averi­ni and quar­ter­backs Dan­ny Langs­dorf for get­ting him ready each week.

“I think those two togeth­er do a great job of putting me and putting our offense in the best posi­tion to win with their calls and their game plan,” Noy­er said. “We’ve devel­oped a great rela­tion­ship. We meet a lot, we talk a lot and I think it’ll only con­tin­ue to grow.”

As Noy­er has excelled, he’s received a lot of sup­port from CU fans, but also from his fam­i­ly and friends from Beaver­ton, Ore. He’s enjoyed it, but won’t let it get to his head.

“That (sup­port) is impor­tant for me and my fam­i­ly, but I can’t ride the high horse,” he said. “I’ve just got to under­stand that it’s great, thank you guys for obvi­ous­ly sup­port­ing me back home, but at the same time I’ve got work to do and I’ve got to get better.”