I feel like Oda doesn’t know how strong he wants to make the admirals so he puts them in janky vague situations where he can upscale them down or up later depending on how he feels
I still believe it's all because Luffy vs Akainu (people can cope about Sabo/Dragon but Akainu impact on the MC as an antagonist cannot be denied, this fight is still extremely likely to me). Oda wants to involve admirals in the story but he also can't show their fulll power if they are meant to be relative to Sakazuki (in that they would push him to extreme diff) before this fight.
So this is why Oda tend to *protect* admirals with caveats when they don't perform as expected so he can still keep their PL nebulous
Ryo has less excuses for his reaction to Shanks haki but he was objectively in an unwinnable situation for anyone (completely outnumbered against 2 emperors including one with a fully fresh crew) and he clearly has an overdramatic personality, I think a Kizaru or a Fuji would have retreated but reacted more calmly, but for the rest :
-Ryo and Fuji were said to be heavily restrained several times in the reverie flashback (you can also add Fuji playing a double game)
-Kuzan was implied twice to be going soft against his former mentor
-Kizaru is mindbroken from having to kill his friends