Love definitely had some head-scratching throws yesterday (to put it politely) and as a player HE has to know better than to make some of those terrible decisions... BUT, at the same time, I can't help but think he is being (negatively) influenced by two things: first is that he is often not really "allowed" to get into a good rhythm, and second is that I think he is often finding himself in situations where he feels like he HAS to hit a home run play to make something happen (which...tends to come as a consequence of not establishing a rhythm in the passing game)
I think Love has a cannon arm but at the same time IMO his bread and butter comes in the quick, more intermediate passing game. That's what needs to be done to open up those deep shots. Yesterday Love had 9 passes thrown behind the LOS, and 5 attempts of 20+ yards (of which a handful were more like 30, 40+ yards)...but just 6 total attempts in that intermediate range. Now to some degree I understand that you take what the defense gives you, but this approach/spread is not going to produce sustained success. Once again it feels like Matt cannot decide when to be aggressive vs conservative. You can't go from playing it ultra safe and go from short yardage inside run, check down, no-gain screen and then suddenly dial up a 40 yard bomb out of nowhere. It's not fooling anyone on the defense and we're only outsmarting ourselves here.
Relatedly I would LOVE to see then numbers for our success rate in the screen game. LaFleur seems enamored with the concept (and to be fair it is not just him. Screen usage is up league-wide) but I don't think the results are following. Again, league-wide, yards gained per play on screens are DOWN. In the last 15 years screen play yardage peaked at just under 6 yds/play but has been trending downwards; for the last three years it has been less than 5 yards per play.
And I think I mentioned it towards the end of the first half, but what on Earth was Matt thinking there??? You've got a minute and change to work with and he calls up a consecutive run plays for nothing, gets a penalty or two called, has to burn a timeout, and runs a ton of time off the clock. Even Greg Olsen who is obviously a Carolina homer was baffled as to that approach. To an extent I can understand not wanting to leave time on the clock like when we were facing Dallas who has a really potent offense, but for crying out loud, our head coach is acting like he's scared of Bryce Freaking Young with his 50% completion rating and average of 5 yards per passing attempt. I gotta step away, I'm getting more mad the more I think about this hahaha