There was a time when Eddie Jones could cheerfully defy all logic and have his audience faithfully nodding along. He seemed a miracle worker back then.
Transforming the worst performing World Cup hosts of all time into Grand Slam winners within a year. Jones' England over-performed; as did his words. Those days are gone.
Closing in on a World Cup he was employed, specifically, to win, England over-perform no longer. It could be argued he has guided the best team at the Six Nations to second place.
There was a time when England over-performed under Eddie Jones - those days are gone
The first 30 minutes against Scotland, the first half in Wales, the entire match in Dublin, would all suggest England are an exciting multi-faceted team and Jones had potential Grand Slam winners on his hands.
Yet it is Wales, often functional, yet exemplary when it mattered, who have walked away with the third Grand Slam of Warren Gatland's tenure.
Ireland may have peaked too early for Japan and it is Wales, not England, who will travel east later this year as the best Europe can offer. Yet, along with Italy, Wales were the only nation in the tournament not to earn a bonus point for scoring four tries in a match.
England did it four times in five games, yet crumbled at key moments.
Gatland is getting a tune out of Wales that Jones, for all his compelling rhetoric, cannot draw from England.
England picked up attacking bonus points in four games but crumbled at key moments
After what was close to being, bottom line, the biggest cock-up in the history of Test rugby, Jones said England's problem was playing under pressure. Then he said he could fix that in six months in time for the tournament in Japan. Then he said it was a problem he inherited as part of the fall-out from the 2015 World Cup.
So it was a problem he hasn't been able to solve in three-and-a-half years, but could be sorted in six months?
'I'm going to have the players for three months, and I've never had that before,' said Jones, blithely. And time was everyone would have bought that. He was Fast Eddie, after all. He got things done.
But 31-0 up, to 31-38 down, is no short-term repair. There is not a team in the world who will not see England as vulnerable after this.
'You do that in a pool game against Tonga and you could find yourself in a difficult position going forward,' said Jones. Perhaps he meant the result, but the circumstances of it cut deeper.
After the Scotland collapse there is no team in the world that won't see England as vulnerable
No team in the world, 15 points down, will think they are out of a game against England after this. The capacity for self-destruction, for complete loss of momentum, is too great.
Jones exudes confidence. That's his style. And when results are backing him up it's a winning combination. At other times, it can seem glib.
He identified a mountain of a problem with England and then discussed it as if it were a molehill; one that can be scaled with the addition of another guru to his team, although he wouldn't name names. He is close to Gareth Southgate, who enlisted the help of Pippa Grange to help his players deal with the pressure of tournaments, and specifically penalties, before the 2018 World Cup. A similar figure, definitely female, perhaps Antipodean, would make sense.
And a good job something does because this was the weekend when reason was chased out of Twickenham with flaming torches. At one stage England were scoring at more than a point a minute: 29 minutes gone, 31 points up.
They were looking at a record score and seasoned Scottish internationals were talking about an outcome from which it would be hard to recover: they were talking the sport, as much as the team.
To then concede the same number of
