playing Monday Morning Quarterback and hanging the crew with no inside info is a bit stupid.
Precisely. Tyre damage comes in all shapes and sizes. Typical (serious) damage would be blowouts and ply section separation where the tyres are still on the hubs and may have generated a lot of noise and vibration. In this situation, there is almost nothing left of the tyre.
Some years ago I recall a QF 767 blew a number of tyres and taxied to the gate to then be followed by an emergency evac (at the gate with slides). Does anyone remember how many blew?
I recall a QF
747-400 brake fire. The flight crew lost contact with the ground engineers after they reported a fire (or lots of smoke) shortly after arrival. The slides were deployed. One of the crew grabbed a fire extinguisher and used the upper deck slide, but broke his arm when he hit the tarmac. Another slide failed to deploy properly and a passenger ended up with back injury. Or I could be mixing up two separate incidents
