Bayern's dominance has really raised the bar in terms of points needed. I feel like before the BVB and Bayern teams of the past decade, somewhere around 70 points should get you a title challenge or even win it occasionally. BVB's 76 last season would've been good enough to win the league on many occasions. Bayern, though, at their peak, are pushing 80 and higher. Bayern's 78 points last season was the lowest of their league winning totals in their most recent run (they're at 76 now with 2 matches left). But until they started this winning streak, they never had a season topping 78 points since the league went to 3 points a win. Their 9 league titles from 1995 to 2010, they averaged 73 points in those wins. In their 7 league titles from 2013 to 2019, they averaged more than 84 points. Extrapolating points per game to 38 games, their pre-2010 titles averaged 81 points. Their post-2013 titles averaged 94 points. Last year's "paltry" 78 points is still 87 in a 38-game season.
The standard has just gotten really high, and while Dortmund and others had chances, beating even 78 points is difficult as I believe Klopp's 2012 Dortmund with 81 points had been the record! And yet since then, that's at the lower end of Bayern's totals.
I do agree that BVB could do better given their talent and their much higher profile now, but Bayern's consistency in reaching the heights along with their quality and depth make it really hard to compete against.
Tuchel's a good coach and still quite young, but it's clear he's difficult to get along with for some players and some executives. It's always going to be become an issue if trust starts breaking down. The other coaches since then haven't hit even his heights (Tuchel got to 78 points in 2015-16), though Favre was close last year.
Maybe some of it is a mentality issue. They had a 12-match stretch in the middle of the season where they scored 40!!! goals but conceded 20 goals, 7 wins, 2 draws (Paderborn 3-3, Leipzig 3-3), and 3 defeats (Bayern 4-0, Hoffenheim 2-1, Leverkusen 4-3). They had a stretch of 3 league matches in a row scoring 5 in that 12-game run. But only ended up with 23 points in those 12 matches, which is below 2 points per game, despite averaging 3+ goals a match. They're not as prolific overall as Bayern, but they score enough in their good seasons to be competitive, but it's not quite enough to win. They've already scored 80+ goals this season in 32 matches but can only hit 72 points max. In general, the Bundesliga seems to be higher scoring at the top than the 2000s for example, but scoring 80+ goals and barely cracking 70 points is an anomaly compared to history (80+ goals and 70+ points could be memorable champions if this were the 2000s), but it's nowhere near enough this season. Again, Bayern upping their game. They're just a bit better, and it's hard to get to that extra level.
Imagine if there was a PL team averaging 94 points a season for 7 years. You'd have to be among the greatest teams ever to finish ahead of them. Despite BVB being really good, they're just not quite there. One can argue, given the investment, development, and profile, they should be there, but it's a hard task. BVB should be hitting 80+ points to challenge Bayern, but the rest of the league is fairly strong. Bayern have been able to get into that extra gear to get past their tough tests, but BVB come up just short. Their head-to-head meetings are a problem too, as Bayern have dominated those recently.
Defensive consistency should help. They scored 9 in two matches against Paderborn but got only 4 points. 6 in two matches against Union Berlin but only 3 points. They have to find it in them to win 1-0, 2-1, etc and not just score 5+ when they're in the mood but concede a bunch of crucial goals when they're off their game.
