Teleconference with Edsall just ended. Lots to digest. Let's take a look at what he discussed.

• The film was tough to watch because it showed "the more opportunities we had that we didn't take advantage of." Edsall will take the week off to figure out how to avoid giving up the big plays on defense and get some productivity out of someone else on offense beside Todman and Kashif Moore. "It's the same old thing," Edsall said. "We can't get enough consistency during the game to get us a chance to win some of these games that we lost. That's the thing we're going to analyze."

• Did someone say big plays allowed on defense? It's a running theme with this defense. Happens every week. On Friday, it was 10 plays that went for 289 yards, while the other 60 went for 164. Edsall was happy with the play on third down (3-for-15) "you take that every time" and fourth down (0-for-2). "It's the big plays," Edsall said.

• So how do you eliminate this problem? "We have to make sure each day in practice we're coaching these guys to execute the technique the way we want it done," Edsall said. Opposing players will make plays, that's inevitable. But on the last Rutgers TD, "three guys didn't do their job"... two guys "didn't do their job" on Rutgers' first score, a 46-yard TD. Execution, focus, do your own job, Edsall says.

• The offense wasn't being conservative late in the game, Edsall says. "Plays 62, 63 and 64, with 2:09 to go, we threw the ball all three times," Edsall said. "With 3:53 to go, we ran the first time and threw the next two times. The series before, when we got the ball on the (UConn) 13, we tried to run the ball there. On the third down play, if we get one block, Jordan might get a first down. They're looking for you to throw the ball, so we made the decision we were going to run there. Other than that drive, we were trying to throw the ball." UConn threw the ball 12 times compared to only six runs over the final 18 plays.

• Later, asked again about being conservative on offense late, Edsall said, "I don't know what you were watching, but we were trying to score each time we had the ball. We never went into a 4-minute offense trying to milk the clock. I just told you, out of the last 18 plays we ran the ball six times and threw it 12. That's 66 percent throw to 33 percent run. That question's ludicrous to me."

• The secondary is having big problems. Mistakes are being made by the front seven, too. Edsall says the coaches can only continue to work with them to iron out the kinks. "Those are the best people we have," Edsall said. "We have to keep working with them. It's not the same guy all the time, it's different guys. Maybe it's still youth, because we are very young on defense. For the most part, we mixed coverages. We had five sacks. We played man-to-man, the last one we got beat. The young man was a little too aggressive at the line of scrimmage, and he couldn't recover."

• Part of UConn's game plan was to pressure on third downs, which happened. The exception was the 3rd-and-14 that led to Rutties first TD. "That one, we didn't pressure," Edsall said. "In hindsight, maybe we should have pressured. But if we play the coverage the way we were supposed to, they wouldn't have had the TD either. In some situations, maybe we could have (pressured) on second down. But you put a game plan together based on the personnel they're going to have in the game. The game plan was to pressure on third down. That's what we did because of the things we saw."

• Someone asked Edsall if the defense was overconfident going into the fourth quarter with the lead. I think it might be the opposite, especially with the young players in a secondary with a less-than-stellar track record. Perhaps they're getting nervous and tight with the game on the line. "We tell them never to look at the scoreboard," Edsall said. "We tell them to take it one play at a time. If they're thinking that, I'm not doing a good enough job of getting that point across. My whole thing is never look at the scoreboard." Not looking at the scoreboard is fine and all. But players know the situation. They can feel what's going on with the crowd. Overconfidence would be a better problem. Being nervous and tight in close games is much more difficult to overcome.

• There's a ton of work on the coaching staff's plate going into the break. "We're six games in, and we're 3-3," Edsall said. "That's who we are. We're a 3-3 team. The bye comes at a good time because we have a bunch of guys banged up, and it gives us a chance to really look at things for the second half of the season."