The above part of your post is the most worrying thing to me.
I'm a day one fan, but I can tell already I'm going to struggle to stay engaged this season on the signs of the Vegas game. This is because between the conservative approach and a woefully pedestrian squad we are just going to be painful to watch. I feel the best we can hope for is a series of 50/50 games we win to scrape into the 8, rather than the close losses we had last year. It will take an absolutely stellar season from
Metcalf for us to do anything, and that is a longshot and a half, especially if he isn't given parity to work with.
The only exciting thing for me is the young forwards that get 10 minutes a game when the result is decided. Webby will probably build their minutes, but things look ugly right about now. Webby's bench use has not adapted in a very long time, we were banging on about it in the early rounds of last year. I'm not sure the willingness to adapt it is there tbh.
I can't believe how much things have changed in 14 months.
With a poor roster you need to shake things up tactically to compete.