Look, I agree with you that Danger Mouse's work stands tall above anyone post-Lanois/Eno, and that Lillywhite and Jackknife do not inspire confidence. But you're not going to get a lot of people here to agree with you that all 4 of those above titles sound bad. I dislike the production on Best Thing and Get Out (both Tedder), and am not a huge fan of American Soul, but I think those other ones all sound great. Love is Bigger isn't nearly as corny or anemic as Origin of the Species (much better in its live incarnation), which is its closest relative.
Yes, I appreciate the divergence of opinion - and I can understand why people like those songs. But when I listened to SoE yesterday, I was struck by the realisation that I hadn't gone back to these songs at all since 2017. There was just something soulless about them all.
Having said that, I'll paraphrase the Big Lebowski to admit, that's just, like, my opinion man.
I also suspect that the following is true:
The blame for any watering down, or any change in direction, is not Steve Lillywhite's fault whatsoever. It's not even Ryan Tedder's fault.
It's the band's fault. That's it. It's on them. No one else.
Specifically, Edge's creative radar seems to have gone awry since HTDAAB. Where once his creative side outlets were things like the Captive soundtrack and Passengers, since the mid-2000s it's been things like Spiderman and that awful Euro 2020 song.
That's not to say that there haven't been flashes of inspiration in the past two decades (see parts of NLOTH, plus songs like Little Things) but without the counterweight of Eno and Lanois, it seems like the sharpness (deliberate pun) is dulled. Parts of SoS are good, too, but most of it veers into very similar territory. Interesting for a few listens, but largely unmemorable.
And the final thing to say on Edge is that Larry's comments about the band having become a benevolent dictatorship might be the greatest insight into their process that we have. I suspect that Bono and Edge always dominated the song-writing process, but Larry's comment suggests that the route for him and Adam to dissent from the others' vision for U2 has now largely closed.