What? The team played well off the back of him and he had a good coach and that makes him bad and didn't play well? But was also a smart decision to play him there?
Bloke won 3 MOM awards in his Origin career and at least one of those was at 5/8 and from what I remember he absolutely earned it on his performance.
He's not saying he played bad (I assume), he's saying objectively he wasn't a particularly talented player as far as what you'd usually have at rep level 5/8 (obviously super talented in other ways, and still had some reasonable 5/8 skills)
From a technical perspective he was not an elite 5/8, game management skills, passing, kicking etc
Look at the skill sets of some of the elite 5/8s around, he is very different to what you typically want in an NRL 5/8
But he was good enough in that area, and more than good enough in other areas, to absolutely excel there at times.
For the Blues he allowed them to maximise their strength (gun backrowers) by having an extra one on the field with a firing Bird in the thick of the action, assisting with what I don't specifically recall but assume was a pretty simple game plan.
