The year before, we had Umass at home with an extra day's rest for our team, and we still lost.
Losses like that have nothing to do with culture or all the stuff you're citing. It's losing to bad teams that we have no business losing to. We have at least a couple of those type of terrible games each year under Sitake. They happen to every team from time to time, but the frequency of really bad losses against average to poor teams has increased dramatically under Sitake. You can't defend that or explain it away by playing a tough team 5 or 6 weeks before the really terrible game.
Your position seems to be fans need to take the product on the field and not have any criticism of what happens regardless. After all, it's hard to be a FBS coach, and the guy we have is doing his jim dandiest best job he knows how to do.