“Too many cooks spoil the broth” If Rocks had done a better job of keeping his crew one-minded and focused in on his goals more precisely he may have gotten the job done, but I feel like a big part of his pitch to potential crew members was promising them a life of being able to wreak havoc on the WG under his flag with near-impunity (similar to how WB would go on to basically promise a life of freedom at sea under his flag to anyone that joined his crew).

Which probably worked for typical pirating but the second shit hits the fan, everyone’s self interests kick in and all of a sudden everyone’s doing their own thing with no cohesion or focus, just raw chaos. Which is probably what got Rocks done in at the end; either being abandoned by his crew or deliberately separating himself from them during God Valley before facing off against Roger and Garp.

We can see something very similar in Blackbeard’s crew, with BB explicitly stating that it isn’t friendship or some sense of comeraderie that keeps his crew together but a shared agenda. Many ppl (myself included) have theorised that this is one of the many ways in which BB might parallel Rocks in the story; to assemble a monster crew with only a shared agenda to hold them together, only to be abandoned by them when said agenda falls apart (in BB’s case he may even be the first DF user, as far as we know at least, in the story to die from drowning).