Why? I don't necessarily disagree, just curious. The zone blocking scheme was put in specifically for his running style, and it was the scheme he was used to running behind in college. Admittedly, I'm not terribly adept at diagnosing the performance of the O-Line in run blocking... did they not execute the zone scheme as well as they needed to, or is he just not as suited to the zone blocking in the pros?
The line appeared to me as if it just wasn't very good at zone blocking, generally speaking. If you look at the numbers of all the runners, it was pretty much the same across the board. I remember 2 years ago when people were pimping Morris over LoMo and LoMo still had the better numbers, the argument was that LoMo was getting too many negative runs. Of course, Morris was getting plenty of those same runs, but it was forgotten because people thought (operative word) that he was running harder and more decisively. Last season, it was pretty clear that the line was just not the same without Neal, and the running game was obviously much improved upon his return (and also when the blocking schemes were altered), no matter which runner was involved.
I do get the impression that Maroney runs in a manner that the team would like tweaked. However, that problem, based upon what I've heard from both sides, isn't so much about seeing holes and hitting them, as it is about when the team wants LoMo to give up on a dead play and just decide to take what little can be gotten. LoMo seems to want to keep waiting for something to open up past the point where the team wants him to just run up the backside of a lineman and take the 1 yard gain.
Personally, I side with Maroney, because this passing game can pretty much ignore 1 yard here and there, and I wish the coaches would make run blocking more of an imperative with this line. Ever since this zone blocking was introduced, I've gotten the impression that this line is much less aggressive than it used to be, and I'd like to see the return of a punishing ground game. Even when this team was playing "3.4 yards and a cloud of dust" with Smith, it was using the run to just pummel the opponent. I don't see that anymore. Now, if they want to sell their souls to the devil and bring in Alex Gibbs, that would work for me. Barring that, though, let's get back to putting a hat-on-a-hat and knocking the snot out of the defense.
