I would say what we were supposed to do was realize ahead of time that we had a QB who had barely played going on the road for his first start against an undersized, undermanned team that was terrible at defending the run. So we probably should not have been calling a bunch of pass plays that resulted in three first-half turnovers that Purdue turned into 14 points despite only needing 38 yards of offense to get those points.
Look, I prefer a run heavy offense too. I think they could and shoulf have ran more earlier and often in that game too.
But at the point of being down more than 2 scores, on the road, with basically a 3rd string QB, in your first year as coach playing against the worst team on the schedule, yeah I kinda see why things got fluffled. Fyfe handing the ball off would have been safer, but to who? Purdue had momentum, and our team was beyond lost. Changing the offense mid game wasn't going to save that turd. The coaches and players can share the blame for it.
Again, we went on to beat MSU after that. So I would say everyone learned from it.
You keep skipping over the part where if we had a different game plan from the outset, it's entirely possible that Purdue would never have gotten that momentum and our players wouldn't have been lost.
As far as who to hand it off to, is that really a question? Take your pick. Hand it off to Harrison Jordon for all I care. Absolutely no reason that we couldn't have run all over them. The only thing that prevented that was our own game plan and play calling.