Team wise - I think it is equally important to look at not only overall talent, but what have you, as the leader, done with the talent you have. Also, what are the expectations of the hand you are dealt and have pushed the talent to perform to those expectations? The lack of rallying his team, relying on and rallying the veterans to provide the synergy, in a nutshell, leadership falls squarely on DA's shoulders. As a leader you automatically receive the credit, but that also means you receive the criticism.

Evaluation of talent - Winston, talent wise upper mid pack, decision making lower pack as far as QB's go. Referring to Dalton as washed up, I do think he has proven otherwise. All of your injury points are also injuries that Dalton has had to deal with as a starter.

Overall observations are;

Special teams has been mediocre. Penalties(lack of discipline) and turnovers (fumbles) anomaly for this team. Part on the individual, part on the coaching staff.

No synergy of the who's who of talent on D. The D on paper should be living up to the pre-season hope and hype. It appears that we haven't been able to pressure as much as in past seasons, some due to injury, yes. While I am not a CJG fan, because of the chaos he brings, he seemed to have energy around him. How much more are you able to coach professionals on fundamentals? I have no idea, but tackling has been ridiculously bad. I do feel relying on your veteran field generals and the ability to get the team motivated is on the coaching staff.

Every armchair coach has their subjective opinion. Mine is, we don't utilize what offensive talent we have to create a spark. This is on the coaching staff.

Dalton is stable, can work the checkdown and the short pass game. But this will only carry you so far with one RB. Unfortunately for Taysom and his Swiss Army Knife duty he needs to be utilized more, injury aside. Kamara continually running off tackle becomes too predictable. Taysom can loosen the opposing D-line, since he runs the majority of the time he is on the field. He does offer another weapon for a D to focus on. Loosening up things for Dalton. There has been a glimmer with Shaheed, limited by usage.

I wouldn't say DA needs to go during his first year. It is frustrating to watch from the sofa at times, because there is an appearance of a lack of cohesion, a lack of spark, a lack of unification. If teams display any of those things and they are out matched in talent, so be it.

Injuries have been an issue, no doubt. But as a whole we appear to just go through the motions without luster and an effective group of leaders can most certainly motivate.

Jury is out, but I don't see DA's leadership skills improving even sans injuries.

Often there are open receivers that Dalton (Winston too) aren’t seeing or throwing to.

When a play is executed the progressions the QB goes through are linear. They go from first designed option, to the next, then the next, then the next, etc. I have heard and read many times that the "open receiver" may actually be later in the progression and not even seen by the time the ball needs to get out. That may be the issue.