Yeah, the defense was definitely better in the second half, but I'm not sure how much that's really worth considering what you said. People are realizing how close this was to being a truly almost historically devastating loss. It's bad as it is, but damn, imagine if they had gotten two more scores on us.
Personally, I wish they had. I think being truly embarrassed (even more than we were) might make a difference. Feels like when we do fail, we're failing justttttt barely enough to not constitute meaningful change, and we stick to the "we're mostly good enough, most of the time, probably, this can still work!" attitude.
It's clear that is no longer the case.