Keeping up with the implications of Trane's harmonic systems, not aping every aspect of him.
We've been through this before, but "keeping up with" the music itself is nothing to look askance at, especially for players who start out learning and not just playing more or less purely intuitively. Besides being a charismatic spiritual and social figure, John Coltrane was also a deep, profound musical thinker and theoretician. It should be neither surprise nor disappointment that a serious thinker disappointment that a serious thinker such as Land would be compelled to pay attention to and explore in the new territories that Trane was positing. If anything, it would be a surprise and a disappointment if he hadn't have done so. Thinkers gonna think.
I do wonder if he had dental issuesat some point, though, because it does sound as though at some point his embouchure loosened quite a bit, perhaps more than would occur voluntarily.