And then that obviously didn’t happen. Simmons has a good track record with some of the random things he shares and it seemed he had an in with Ishiba for a minute, so I bet Kevin was going to be promoted at one point before they changed their mind.
Kevin was also somewhat of a candidate for the job (perhaps by default) when Pope got the job, so everyone paying attention should’ve been somewhat aware of him
TL;DR: of course.