UT is hard to figure out . . . (start Finn!)

You know what?

I give up.

We’ll sooner find the lost city of Atlantis before we figure out the lost football team of Toledo.

One week, the Rockets outplay Notre Dame in South Bend. The next, they get waxed by Colorado State as a two-touchdown home favorite.

One week in the Mid-American Conference, they work over the preseason league favorite (Ball State). The next, they get worked by a team that counts a dozen starters with freshman eligibility (Northern Illinois).

The latter was the outcome Saturday at the Glass Bowl, and don’t let the final score deceive.

While the Rockets showed nice fight in rallying for a late go-ahead touchdown — only to fall 22-20 on a chip-shot field goal with 26 seconds left — there was little doubt which team turned Toledo’s house into its home.

No, not when the visiting Huskies controlled the game in holding the ball for 41 minutes.

Forty-one minutes!

A sun-splashed homecoming crowd of 21,284 came to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Toledo’s 35-game winning streak, and stayed to watch the streakiest Rockets team in memory.

In the latest episode the hosts tossed aside Jekyll, and Hyde played the greatest hits.

On a day that featured as many red flags as yellow ones, the Rockets were beset by 100 yards of ill-timed penalties (listen, I have no idea which game the officials were watching, either, but that’s beside the point), an offense with no rhythm, and a quarterback rotation with no rhyme.

How to explain how out of whack it all looked?

In one respect, the answer is simple: These are 18 to 22-year-old kids — not automatons — and just because the Rockets were again double-digit home favorites doesn’t mean Northern Illinois was going to play along.

On any given Saturday ...

“The narrative that somebody is just better than everybody else and you’re going to win by 20 points every week, that’s out the window,” coach Jason Candle said. “We can stop with all that. This is MAC West football. There’s a reason why a different team plays in the MAC championship game damn near every year. These games are hard, and we know that.”

Yet, as we wrote after the Colorado State loss, fans have every right to expect better than these extremes.

Every right to expect more from a program that every year promotes its top-rated recruiting classes and — with 22 starters back from last season — is perfectly aligned to win right now.

To expect more from a program that invests more in football — including in its head coach — than anyone else in the league and is now 12-11 in its past 23 conference games.

Bottom line: Candle and his staff need to do a better job of preparing and motivating Toledo to play with some measure of consistency.

And, for that matter, while you have me going, they need to pick a quarterback.

What’s it going to take for Toledo to turn to Dequan Finn as its starter? What am I missing?

You can win with Carter Bradley, and he flashed his potential last year, including at Northern Illinois when he threw for 432 yards. But for this team in this moment, Finn’s run-pass threat — and ability to cover for an offensive line that remains a clear weakness — makes him the clear answer.

Saturday was further proof.

With Bradley in the first two series, Toledo went four-and-out — Bradley just missed a wide-open Bryce Mitchell on a perfectly scripted fourth-down deep ball — and three-and-out. Then, Finn came in for the third series, and, with his ability to extend plays and keep the defense guessing in the read-option game, the offense completely opened.

On the next two drives, with Finn still in the game, Bryant Koback ran for a 40-yard score, then took a something-from-nothing dump-off from his scrambling quarterback for a 75-yard touchdown.

Yet, even with that spark, Finn sat for two series in the second half before returning to close the game in style. His 11-yard touchdown pass to Devin Maddox punctuated a six-play, 75-yard drive that pushed the Rockets ahead 20-19 with 3:35 remaining.

In all, Toledo’s offense ran 29 plays for 297 yards during Finn’s six full series. It ran 20 plays for 60 yards in Bradley’s four series.

And that followed a clear pattern.

I went back and quickly charted Toledo’s offensive series in its five games against FBS opponents this season. Bradley and Finn occasionally share snaps within the same series, so there’s no perfect way to measure the success of their drives. But if you go off which quarterback finished the possession — and toss out drives that were either at the end of a half or started within the opponents’ 10-yard line (as two did against UMass last week) — here’s my count: Bradley has led Toledo to three touchdowns and six field goals in 39 series. Finn has led UT to six touchdowns and two field goals in 18 series.

Simply, the offense functions better with Finn, and, at a position in which timing and rhythm and confidence are everything, it’s hard to imagine the two-quarterback system continuing, just as it’s hard not to imagine what would have happened if Finn had played the entire game Saturday.

While the Rockets defense appeared human, Candle correctly noted that holding a team to 22 points and 396 yards is good enough to win in this era.

I asked the coach if he’d seen enough to commit to Finn.

“Obviously, we go through practice and continue to evaluate where everybody is at,” Candle said. “Carter got banged up a little bit today. DQ did some really good things. He’s new to a lot of these situations, but he hung in there and threw a couple of tough balls in there in the end. His growth is good, and he’s going to continue that.”

Your guess is as good as mine about what all that means.

But here’s betting Finn gets the start next weekend at Central Michigan.

This mercurial Toledo team needs an answer, not more questions.

Contact David Briggs at dbriggs@theblade.com or on Twitter @DBriggsBlade.