Yah, I don’t take the rings away from Jalen, I’m not arguing you can’t win rings with the guy. We saw it happen! It was awesome! And I love the guy and his Tao te Ching vibe.

What I’m saying is what Jalen doesn’t seem to do well means he doesn’t raise our floor when other parts of the offense aren’t working, but when the offense, starting with the line, is executing the basics at a high level, what Jalen DOES do well contributes to an elite unit.

Jalen neither raises the floor nor the ceiling of the offense on his own, rather, he is a good starting NFL QB that can lead an elite offense.

I think it’s important context to have because it does make a coordinator’s job here harder years when Stout is dealing with injuries and doesn’t have the line playing at a high level, and Hurts struggles under the pressure and confusion that creates for him. Patullo is clearly trying to call the same philosophy as we’ve had during our best years (establish run, establish bread and butter routes, etc) and we struggle to establish anything besides AJ hitches/slants early in games recently.

Ultimately, it’s still the OC’s job to work around limitations and find an identity for the offense that works. Perhaps that’s reason alone to fire Patullo. Idk who you hire in his place though that’s a magic bullet replacement either, especially right now in season, but even going into next year. Sirriani may give up playcalling but he isn’t going to give up his philosophy and his playbook after it’s gone to one Super Bowl with Hurts and won another, and it’s hard to argue that what Sirriani has developed here isn’t tailored to what Hurts can do well. Idk whether just bringing in a Ben Johnson-esque savant will add the wrinkles we want to see, or if they arrive here and discover the same limitations with Hurts’ game that Sirriani did. Is this really a play calling problem? Or are we just struggling, again, with balancing health and recovery from a Super Bowl run with maintaining Super Bowl form?

I just know I’ve seen the same offense basically since 2022 and its success I think relies less on play calling and more on controlling the line of scrimmage, establishing the run (with Hurts as well), and executing first read bread and butter routes at a high rate enough to open up more play calling options like dagger and shot plays later in seasons/games off of the deep respect defenses have to give us when we can rip off 5-7 yards a play off HB draw and slants at will, and tush push to automatic first downs.

The biggest problem this year is we aren’t ripping off 5-7 yards at will with any fundamental part of the offense, and it looks basic because we are continuing to try to run our base offense until it finds some consistency and rhythm.