What exactly is "par"? De Gea is just not "awful" with respect to simple passes. Yes, even I can put together a video of poor passes by De Gea, but I can also put together a video of poor passes by Alisson and Ederson, the two keepers in the PL who I would agree are, overall, better keepers. But neither are coming to OT, ever, and I'm not having any suggestions (which you are not making) that we should get rid of De Gea for Henderson, or Ramsdale, or Sa, or Pickford. If we're ready to spend say the 100m it would probably take to pry Pope from Newcastle (who don't need to sell players) and kick De Gea to the bench, fine, but that's going to eat into the trust fund that we're going to need to bring in a top striker (say Osimhen) and a top progressive midfielder (say De Jong). Perhaps the Qatar group will buy the club and perhaps they'll have a 300m budget to buy all of Osimhen, De Jong and Pope, but I seriously doubt that will be the case. I really like Pope and see potential greatness in him and if ETH says bring him in, I'm on board, but I'm not board with bringing in Pope it meant we were therefore unable to bring in a top striker and top midfielder.
As for the "maker of great saves but not a great shot stopper anymore" argument, did you even watch our last few matches? These were not fingertip saves on the back of poor positioning. These were properly stopped shots that arose both from fantastic positioning and a strong hand at the right place at the right time. Speculation on my part only without question, but the two saves Ter Stegen failed to make are saves we see De Gea make on a routine basis and we think nothing of it when he does, but then obsess over a missed pass to his fullbacks. We want perfect saves AND perfect passing, but in the grand scheme of things a missed pass to Shaw or Dalot is of vastly less consequence than the kind of saves De Gea makes on a regular basis that Ter Stegen was unable to make.