Post-Bye Reflection on Offensive Struggles

I understand statistically our offense played well but it’s pretty clear there was a dramatic shift in the way the offense operated pre and post bye. And I argue everything felt a lot harder and driven as much by our defensive success as opposed to sheer offensive domination. Much of our early season success was driven by love (think his sicko mode throws). It mirrored our style of play from late season 2023 with the caveat that Love was putting the ball in harms way a tad too often

In hindsight, I think MLFs desire to limit the turnovers that plagued our early season offense led to the establishment of a conservative run first offense that stymied Loves in season development and capped explosiveness in the passing game. Love was relegated to a game manager who needed to process the game efficiently, be precise and rely on his receivers ability to be detail oriented in their execution. I think the change is indicative of MLFs innate conservatism as a head coach (not necessarily conservatism as a playcaller)

I don’t think any of the aforementioned changes are foundationally tailored to Loves strengths and in fact highlight his weaknesses. Love is a playmaker who thrives in out of structure play and improvisation. While I understand the formula works in the regular season, it is highly dependent on game flow and opponent. When the context of the game gets out of hand, we had difficulty adjusting quickly enough to adapt to talented teams and we often saw the team regain its explosiveness in the late 3/4th quarters when we reverted to lettting Love play make and operate out of structure.

I do understand that perhaps this experience operating as a traditional west coast game manger may help him grow in the future but it did limit his short term success and I think capped our ceiling for this year.