Yes but I could have 100% motivation and still miss the big sticks from 10m out because my skills suck. In general the pies look motivated but poorly skilled to me.
Individual and collective motivation are complex. The coach may be factor but one of many and not the most important. Marley may have decided his career is elsewhere, current performance is irrelevant to that and so lost some % of personal motivation. Bucks, even if he wanted to, may not be able to impact or change this mindset.
It doesn't matter what mechanisms Buck's believes are the best to maximise individual and collective motivation (worth noting, though, his approach is more in line with modern day thinking in the area). What matters is that we field a team in which individual and collective motivation is maximised. If an individual, like Marley, is unmotivated then that is a selection issue. If a number of individuals or the collective lacks motivation then that is a club culture issue. Both of these issues come back to the coach regardless.
Personally I don't see the evidence that Collingwood has a number of individuals or the collective lacks motivation.
As an aside, skill level can be impacted just as much by fear of failure. When the conscious mind intrudes skills head south. Cloke is a classic example of this with his yips. I have seen that heaps this year. Marsh was another example in his early games this year. The effort was there, he'd make a mistake then come screaming around, so focused on repairing his mistake he'd not read the play well and give a way a free. My concern is that the culture at the pies doesn't allow for errors, puts too much mental intensity on the players restricting their ability to play their natural game, building fear not confidence. Could be inexperience, not sure on this, no real concrete evidence outside of a hunch.
A similar issue is players not knowing what they should be doing, conscious mind gets involved and skills go out the window. This has been clearly evident in our backline in many games: players not knowing who to pick up, whether they should go up or not, where to run. This may be inexperience - Maynard has greatly improved over the games he has played in this regard. It may also be lack of leadership - if Maxy was there shouting "pick ra ra up", the younger players wouldn't need to think about it. Either explanation begs the question is this the appropriate game plan to maximise the development of a young, inexperienced and lacking in leadership side.