At the start of the season Leeds were on fire. Burrow & McGuire in the halves working off the back of a decent pack. It all went a bit pear shaped when Burrow got injured.

Peacock & Leuluai will do one more season. McGuire needs to have a really good pre-season as he looks really out of shape.

I reckon Burrow will move on for 2015. He had a deal to go to Cas for 2014 all squared off until McDermott gave him the half back spot ahead of Sinfield. Don't be surprised if he moves there to finish at his home town club.

The end of season fade out was all to do with the determination to win the CC. Once that was done, the older players had the monkey off their back & the focus on winning the GF, which was unlikely, was not as strong as perhaps it should have been.

Briscoe has been a bit disappointing. Very much a confidence player who doesn't seem to believe in or back himself.

Personally I still like Briscoe and I am hoping this years lack of consistency is down to bedding into a new team. However, I am concerned that the lack of understanding between him and Watkins is not getting any better. How many passes have gone straight into touch? Is this a Briscoe or a Watkins problem? As for Watkins, havent seen anything special from him this year.

Bailey has one of the best tackles made/missed tackles percentages in the team

Peacock 780 made / 55 missed
Delaney 751/53
Ablett 660/59
Aiton 557/29
Sinfield 534/39
Stevie Ward 515/51
Singleton 467/44
Leuluai 448/39
Bailey 433/20
Watkins 427/27

As others have said, the pack have been too easily bogged down with the consequence that when the ball has gone wide (often slowly) the main onus on the outside backs has still been to make metres up field rather than taking the riskier option of cutting loose. Contrast us with Wigan: by the time they're on their 4th or 5th they're well up field and put the ball wide with lots of dummy runners and tend to make good metres. Their attacks don't always pay off but if not the turnover is still close to the opponents line. We struggle to get to half way by the 5th, having ventured little in the way of attacking play. We then put a long kick in, usually with a good chase it has to be said, but the chasers have already taken a battering whilst getting the kicker into position. The turnover is often in the same area as Wigan's but by then our defenders are exhausted and yield ground readily, often on the back of a penalty of the kind often given away by a fatigued defence.
Our halves are slow; that they are quality players is still apparent but they now play at a tempo reminiscent of good players that have dropped down to championship level.
Our long and short kicking games often leave much to be desired, although in the former instance much of the fault is from playing behind a labouring pack.
Aiton does a job, not much more, and the perception of Burrow having retained his speed is purely that; too often he's running at markers who've had ample time to position themselves but even when he's not, he's easily caught.

For me the decision by Hardaker to get the ball over the try line rather than grounding it and taking time over a drop out, kicking it 50/60m down field is the bigger fault. We didn't need the points, we needed field position and time. Briscoe knocking on is unfortunate and even if he had caught it would have been forced back over the line anyway due to the entire defence being 5+ yards offside - how it wasn't picked up by the video ref is beyond me! Maybe we should start a Twitbook group and harangue the RFL into investigating it!

I don't recall too many times this year when the Leeds pack has been significantly outplayed or battered. I think our pack has been as good as anyones. What we do with the ball is the issue. First part of the season we attacked with depth, width and confused the opposition with Hardaker running free on both flanks. Achurch was being given the ball in a wide channel on the right and was looking like the real deal at last rather than having Delaney et al constantly attacking the angle back into the space behind the ruck, which was the only way we made metres last season. It didn't last, and I don't think that is because our props got tired.
Achurch and then Burrow getting injured, followed by Hardaker's ban saw Leeds revert to what they have been dong for the last 2-3 seasons, and our attack fell apart. What really gets you a quick PTB against a disorganised defence is putting a few offloads together, if we had King Kong in the front row it wouldn't help if all he did was stick the ball up his jumper and ran down the middle.

What I think we need? A really good wide running second row on the right to balance up with Ablett on the left (Achurch almost looked like he was going to do the job but frankly patience with him has expired), a top class 9 so Burrow can play 7 and McGuire can retire gracefully, and some very new ideas on attack that have for example, Ryan Hall getting the ball like Big Les used to get it from Hape, 5 yards out and on the move (he's score every week if we gave him a couple of those) - and that means a fresh coaching structure.

I'd agree with all of this although maybe a little harsh on Achurch. He [iwas[/i begining to look like what was needed on the right but since his recovery from injury the coach has reverted to giving him bit parts ....and at prop.

It's almost as if any fringe player who begins to look like a threat to any of McDermott's favourites is again put back in his place for fear of then having to make some tougher selection decisions.

Briscoe obviously has had a poor season, but he has been given very little running chances from his inside backs.
Looking at the wire -widnes match chris bridges passing to Monaghan was superb, drawing the cover and passing. Briscoe is a good finisher but he needed some quality ball, on most occasions this season he did not get decent ball.

Spot on!

Briscoe and BJB scored plenty of tries off Watkins at the start of the season. Wonder how much ball Briscoe would have got had Tony Smith been coaching Leeds this year?

ALOT more