I don't think that's true. The defense made some big plays early in that game, but the offense really only mustered one real scoring drive of significance in the entire game.
Football, and college football especially, is a game where momentum can make a big difference. Once you lose momentum, you need to find a way to get it back. Sometimes it's a big play, sometimes it's taking the football and grinding out a long drive, sometimes it's a turnover. We got turnovers early, lost momentum, and then never got it back. To me, the defense this season CAN change momentum, but the expectation should be that our offense is the one that takes it back. When you have as much talent and experience as we have, especially at the QB position, the offense should have done SOMETHING to turn things back our way. Instead, they continued to flounder and look completely lost.
Let me ask you... do you really think Minnesota is a significantly better team that Illinois and/or Purdue? I think they're probably a little better than Illinois, but not drastically. I think Purdue has played a relatively difficult schedule, and they're worse than either team. But we blew those teams out. It wasn't even close. What was the big difference? My contention is still that the primary failure was at the QB position, that he was so inefficient that it threw everything off.
I've also given a lot of thought to the types of plays being called. I don't think it is entirely on Beck. If you go back and watch the game, Martinez audibles a LOT. We were running no-huddle but still taking the play clock down under 5 seconds quite a bit. We didn't see that as much with the other two QBs. Beck's biggest problem is allowing Martinez to make those decisions. We might've had more running plays called, but Martinez could have been checking out of them based on what he saw. That's something that Beck would never say - that would be throwing Martinez under the bus. But that's something I'd be curious to find out.
