while I havent really played much of the ladder yet, when it comes to bans, it's worth noting that just because something can be handled doesn't make it banworthy. The real answer to ask not "Can I handle this Pokemon?", it's "Can I handle this Pokemon in tandem with every other relevant threat? You can probably deal with Flutter Mane, but what about Roaring Moon, the Iron bros, Chien-Pao, Chi-Yu, Meowscarada, Houndstone, etc, and all the old/returning threats, all at the same time?
If offensive teams can't break stall, some defensive mons need to get banned. If defensive teams can't survive heavy/hyper offense, some offensive mons need to be banned, usually more than one. Not necessarily because those mons were too much, the meta just hit an overflow point, and they happen to be the most problematic ones, and therefore the ones to skim off.
I've seen this happen at the start of pretty much every new gen or influx of new pokemon - the meta turns HO-centric, some offensive mons get banned, it calms back down. It's fine to have a meta that's offense-heavy - lord knows people'd find it more fun than one that's defense-heavy - but being that way due to non-HO teams not being worth it since their defensive advantages are rendered a negative tradeoff is definitely a red flag of a restrictive meta.