"Utilize Scott, keep the Purdue offense off the field" was the EXACT game plan that Debord used - Scott got 2/3rds of the touches when IU wasn't in 3rd in long through the first 3 quarters. And that worked at keeping Purdue off the field, but the problem was the IU couldn't find the endzone with that strategy. The offense opened up when IU abandoned the run game.
Imo, DeBord's refusal to throw intermediate passes over the middle, the entire year, but especially against Purdue, killed our offense. We were either dink & dunk, WR screens (which rarely worked because the opponents DBs were drawn up so close to our WRs) or low % sideline jump balls down the field. When we finally thew over the middle against Purdue, we hit 4 in a row. We could have, and should have, been doing that the whole game.
I'm not talking about 20-25 yds downfield, but rather 10-15 yds. We got killed the entire year by 10-15 yd slant passes across the middle, but we refused to throw them.
I think he was afraid of ints....we got those anyway, 13 thrown by PR v. 19 TDs, most on little tipped passes on our dinks & dunks.
edit....I neglected to mention the repeated fade routes to the corner of the end zone every time we got in the red zone......every time I saw one of those I knew our kicker was not far behind.