Hey Scott - what prediction mode are you using for field value direct answers? We recently released a feature that allows you to customize the behavior of field value direct answers to make the more show more often, if that suits your use case.
It sounds like you might be using the One Entity heuristic which is the most conservative and only shows direct answers if the search resolves to one entity. Try using either the Classifier mode, which uses an NLP classifier to detect whether or not the user is seeking a direct answer, or the Field Name mode, which shows a direct answer whenever a field name is detected.