Once Gaara was saved by Naruto we never saw him use the sand coffin again, all his attacks became much more large scale for no reason. If you could grab their hand and crush it that would stop them doing jutsus and put them in a lot of pain then you could probably be able to finish the job and grab their torso and crush it.
Instead Gaara would always be doing a huge sand tsunami or something and it was take ages to build up the sand and waste chakra. they definitely made him weaker.