The difference between what was happening last year and what's happening this year is that last year the whole 'sitting back and letting the opposition run 10 metres every hit-up' seemed like a tactical decision to minimise fatigue and minimise flaws in the defensive line (Which usually happen when a couple of players rush up and a couple of others don't). If everyone is sitting back the 10 shoulder-to-shoulder, you're rarely going to give away inside the 10 penalties and it's also very difficult to concede line-breaks, if executed properly.
This season it doesn't seem like a strategy, it seems like our players are out on their feet after the first 15 minutes, then they hang their heads when they do something poor and it just snowballs into fatigued penalties and 6-to-go's, poor defensive lines, oppositions marching up field. It's literally just a recipe for disaster at the moment, the coaching on both sides of the field is AT LEAST 25% of the problem at the moment, with a majority of the other 75% being players not putting in consistent efforts defensively and players having some of the lowest situational awareness of any footy players I've seen in recent years.