I think the biggest issue with Desai was the fact that the defense could not get off the field on 3rd down.
The Bills were 13/22, the 49ers were 8/11, the Cowboys were 9/16. But these are 3 of the best offenses in the league.
Patricia did improve that statistic over the last 4 games (They finished 30th after allowing 21/52 over thr final 4 games). But everything else was a mess. They were embarrassed by 2nd string QBs and bad teams. There was a ridiculous amount of pre-snap confusion on alignments.
At least Desai could hang his hat on the fact that he held the 3 and 6 seeds in the AFC to 17 and 10 points, respectively (with 0 2nd half points in either game). What's Patricia's biggest achievement? Not getting torched by Tommy DeVito?
Yes! It was reported that they actually first took away Desai's third down playcalling. Can you believe that? Like, you're the man and you're calling the D, except when 3rd down hits then we're doing this other thing. And then eventually it's "sorry you're not even calling 1st or 2nd down anymore we're going to jam your system onto Matt Patricia".
Total mess.
Offense too. The players said over and over again that their failures were all on them - lack of consistent execution. But to an extent you have to eventually believe your own lyin eyes to an extent. This team could simply not figure out how to do a short hot-read when facing a standard blitz. It was like they've never heard of this 'blitz' thing before. They've got an amazing OL, dynamic WRs, well above average TE and RB and the runner up MVP from last season who by all accounts works his ass off and you can't figure out Wink Martindale's gonna blitz the hell out of you so have a plan for that? Or Todd Bowles?
I was happy to see Gannon go, but man what a failure the D was. And I was more than comfortable with Brian Johnson taking over as OC, but maybe I should have been more concerned that this is the guys third season in the NFL at all. I see he's getting HC interviews at Carolina and I think Atlanta and that's preposterous unless they're just Rooney Rule related.
It's been said a million times but how important was Shane Steichen to this team last season? I did not appreciate the impact he had. As for the 10-1 start, they were like the worst 10-1 team of all time but they were still 10-1. I think talent took them there but as the league figured them out from last year and into this year Sirianni's crew had no answers whatsoever. I do believe the players lost confidence in the coaching staff and that they were exasperated and maybe even quit. I don't love the idea of Lurie getting a reputation as having a quick trigger finger but this is a real mess and I don't think you can roll Sirianni back out there with two new coordinators again and expect to compete at the highest level. What a clusterfuck.
@54thMA - thank you for the kind words!