[Goose]

And there is a contingent of people on this board who think the problem is not that Shaw has not changed his offensive philosophy enough, but that he strayed from what was working, and that we should go back to being a ball-control, power running team, a proposition that I am sympathetic to.  

Put me in that camp.

I think the problem became they couldn't recruit the linemen or the RBs needed to stay with the power run. Gaffney and (even more) CMac were the backs who moved us away from the big back who can run inside all the time. At that point (2014), we were not the "power run" team any more. For a while, it looked good, because CMac was a once in a generation player, but the problem was there. In 2016, it caught up with us. Our OL wasn't very good. Love was a great back, but he was home run or loss of one. Again, the line wasn't good enough. This evolution has been going on for a while. Shaw has been making some lemonade with lemons, but you can't do that forever. Wit KJ and Scarlett, we were in a "throw into coverage and let JJ go get it mode". This isn't a good plan, but with the personnel we had, that was all you could do. With Mills and Fehoko in 2020 we had a legitimate deep threat, so despite our lack of a running game, we played pretty well. In 2021, even without injuries, we did not have that. While we have excellent receivers we have no real over the top threat. Our OL can't create holes for the run game. It isn't that Shaw hasn't adapted. He has. However, as one option after another falls away there is nothing left to call. Shaw needs to fix the OL. Until that happens, the rest doesn't matter much, offensively speaking.

The defense is another tale of woe, and perhaps a worse one. Our DL is non-existent. We have two legit players on the DL and the rest are "make do". There are too many good to adequate teams out there to survive this condition, no matter how we scheme it.

[Goose]

And there is a contingent of people on this board who think the problem is not that Shaw has not changed his offensive philosophy enough, but that he strayed from what was working, and that we should go back to being a ball-control, power running team, a proposition that I am sympathetic to.  

Put me in that camp.

I think the problem became they couldn't recruit the linemen or the RBs needed to stay with the power run. Gaffney and (even more) CMac were the backs who moved us away from the big back who can run inside all the time. At that point (2014), we were not the "power run" team any more. For a while, it looked good, because CMac was a once in a generation player, but the problem was there. In 2016, it caught up with us. Our OL wasn't very good. Love was a great back, but he was home run or loss of one. Again, the line wasn't good enough. This evolution has been going on for a while. Shaw has been making some lemonade with lemons, but you can't do that forever. Wit KJ and Scarlett, we were in a "throw into coverage and let JJ go get it mode". This isn't a good plan, but with the personnel we had, that was all you could do. With Mills and Fehoko in 2020 we had a legitimate deep threat, so despite our lack of a running game, we played pretty well. In 2021, even without injuries, we did not have that. While we have excellent receivers we have no real over the top threat. Our OL can't create holes for the run game. It isn't that Shaw hasn't adapted. He has. However, as one option after another falls away there is nothing left to call. Shaw needs to fix the OL. Until that happens, the rest doesn't matter much, offensively speaking.

The defense is another tale of woe, and perhaps a worse one. Our DL is non-existent. We have two legit players on the DL and the rest are "make do". There are too many good to adequate teams out there to survive this condition, no matter how we scheme it.