I can't figure out who's at fault. Tommy Armstrong isn't a good QB - his passing is abysmal. But we also have a dumb ass Offensive Coordinator that thinks our QB needs to be slinging passes come hell or high water.
I'm going to give Beck the benefit of the doubt on the INTs. The two INTs targeting Westerkamp were packaged plays and both were great calls and reads, but there was some miscommunication somewhere.
The first in the endzone was inside zone with the option for Armstrong to pull it and pop to Westerkamp running what probably should have been a slant. It was a great call and read by Armstrong, every single one of Purdue's LBs flew up the field and it should have been an easy throw and catch but Westerkamp never got his head around, as if he didn't realize it was a packaged play. He was tracking his man for a block. Armstrong probably should have seen that Westerkamp didn't turn his head and just eaten it or thrown it out the back of the endzone but that's a quick moving play you have to trust your receiver. The ball was tipped but it would have been picked either way.
The second INT up the seam was a bubble/seam keying on the alley defender and was wide open and well read, but again, Westerkamp wasn't even looking. That's very weird for Westerkamp because he is an incredibly good route runner. I'm wondering if there was some miscommunication in the play signalling on both of those plays. Westerkamp honestly looked like he was blocking on both plays, one for inside zone, the other for bubble.
Now, that said, despite those individual calls being well timed... why the shit were we throwing? Armstrong clearly does not have a good grasp of the passing game or his reads, it just wasn't necessary. As cringeworthy as it is to go all B-1-G and run a few plays and punt, that's what we should have been doing in that game. 3 runs and a punt to put the defense back on the field would have resulted in a far less stressful game.
Beck's play calling got pretty interesting down inside the 5 as well. I'm not sure how many times we have to run inside zone/split zone into a bear front and an 8 man box before we call a simple speed option or jet sweep or go under center and run a toss play. I got the sense that Beck didn't want to show things for Wisconsin and so called about as bland of a game as possible and it almost resulted in disaster.
