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[QUOTE="IthacaMatt, post: 4359967, member: 405"]
I agree that playing a soft zone and not bringing the blitz let AOC carve us up.  I think he only missed 2 passes in the first half.

But they did tighten the coverage at the corner, and they started bringing more pressure.  O'Connell only went 2-8 to start the second half.  So I thought the defense made good half-time adjustments.

Tucker isn't quite healthy.  His thigh is still bothering him.  He just doesn't have that explosiveness right now.  He needs time on the treatment table.  I'd like to see that New Mexico transfer, not the young frosh from NJ.  Somebody a little more mature to take some pressure off of Tucker, maybe be able to give him a breather and be fresher.

That limited our ground game a lot.  They pretty much stuffed Tucker, except for that one run in the first half where he got about 12 or 13 yards.  Purdue's D Line was quite good, too.  Credit where credit is due.  We were not opening a lot of holes for Tucker.

I thought the play calling was too conservative in the first half, but the defense kept us in it.  Shrader did come back down to earth a bit, too.  He's not going to hit 80% all season long.

What I thought was so impressive was the sheer number of times he made the play, the run, the throw - a lot of the time all by himself.  He was a monster out there, despite the poor game statistically.
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