It's all of the above. And that's why most on here were sadly mistaken when they said that we'd be unstoppable with a Gawn/Grundy ruck combination. Losing hit-outs are the easiest thing for an opposition coach to neutralise.
Too many people got caught up with last week's game, in particular Gawn/Grundy. That reality was that Bevo did nothing to counteract Gawn's dominance over English, and nullify our mids. English broke even with Grundy.
If Max is out long term, our coaching dept have a lot of work to do. Grundy can't play Max' role because he's useless as a contested mark. I honestly don't see what the answer is.