1. Injuries - I don't know what the root of this is but following this team's offseason and then watching them during the season has been tiresome. Two totally different teams. One is a modestly competitive team that might have some spunk, the other is a bunch of guys off the street with names I feel like we grabbed out a hat from a charity lottery. Maybe just bad luck maybe bad culture, dunno. Fishy how crazy this hits repeatedly after Brees leaves though.
2. Roster - Goes back to injuries but it's hard to know who to build on when your young guys can't stay healthy. It's one thing to say it's due to an aging roster but those aging guys probably put in your highest snaps counts for your originally expected contributors. We might have to completely rebuild this young roster because some of their careers feel over before they started.
3. Coach - We haven't had a coach who can exceed his station. Just a guy who will give you what you expect from his roster or worse. And the roster has been a disaster.
4. Cap - The cap is in recovery mode from way back when we were pushing Brees and then Covid hit. They had more money to move last year but didn't because they realized this roster's future isn't looking good. So Loomis stopped asking Gayle to put money upfront (which is required for this pushback cap management). That made the roster thinner and more susceptible to injury. More a detrimental effect of the bad roster that makes it even worse. ie. Hard to invest in damaged goods. (Just like the Pels won't go in the luxury because crap like this keeps happening).
5. QB - It's the most important position in football by a long shot. Carr is the best QB we've had since Brees but he won't win you games in the 4th qtr. To be clear I'm fine with Carr but he's not good enough to overcome these kinds of deficiencies, I'd like to find a QB who can will you games in the 4th though. I don't think he's on the team yet, so keep rolling with Carr and keep looking. I just wish they would have begun this search in earnest sooner.