AFL Autopsy R20: Smashed by the Saints, and the season is cooked.

[VelvetSledge]

Another enormous drop off in the second half of the season.

Same old Essendon.

Every single year.

Have at it.


Yes I know we have an unspoken rule about posting these threads before the final siren but if the team can’t stick to the basics than neither can a completely jaded footy forum mod.

**** this club.

 

[Wahooti Fandango]

Completely cooked.

 

[Zach Package]

Worst loss of probably the last couple of seasons. Saints flat out stink, their one wood is skinny anaemic runners who hate contact going absolutely hog wild, the only way they win is if you let them do it.

And **** oath did we let them do it.

 

[Tassieboy]

What a team.

 

[Maxabillions]

Hey come on now, let’s not be resultist about it

 

[Shanghaistu]

We were always an abject bottom-4 list, just somehow jagged wins against the Bulldogs and Giants to inject some false hope for 2024 - back to the drawing board for the 8-year plan (is this year 0?)

 

[Shanghaistu]

And I’m going to spew listening to the media continue to discuss scenarios where we can ‘still make finals’

 

[SpeckieMcVeigh]

I can't believe SportsBet were dumb enough to make us betting favourites, St Kilda were the easiest "upset" I've picked all year.

Not a single person in an Essendon jumper can hold their heads high, not one.

 

[Phone]

People will meltdown over this round and last round. Another late season collapse. Are we not fit enough. Did we start getting over-confident. Folks, all season, this team has clearly not been much better than the established bottom 6 teams. Rounds 11 and 12 were enough to know this wasn't a serious team. You had no excuse other than being delusional if you thought otherwise. We were lucky to beat these teams when we played them earlier in the season. These loses are, in the end, probably good things because now we can't be delusional. We've still got a long way to go and as far as I know, the club itself doesn't think much different. But winning games can sometimes lead to you drinking your own bathwater. We've got no reason to do that now, and that's good. I'm not smart enough to pinpoint the exact problems and the exact solutions beyond "we need better players because we're not a good team" and that's as true today as it was 4 weeks ago when we were third on the ladder.

For most of the season, there's been a clear bottom 6 teams. That has been slightly shaken up recently, but I don't think that's disrespectful to those other teams, which are the Hawks, Crows, Saints, Eagles, North and Richmond. So how did we perform against them?

R2, we only won against the Hawks due to an insanely good goal-kicking performance, and a bad one from them

R4, we won against the Saints by 4 points. Close games are coin tosses. It's been proven in nearly every sport, and the AFL is no different. A team's performance in close games is, essentially, not a predictable feature going forward. A team can win a bunch of close games one season, and the very next season lose them all. This was also a game that at 3/4 time, we had kicked 8.5 to the Saints 8.12. We were clearly the better team in the last quarter of that game, but we were lucky to still be within 10 points by that point of the game.

R7, we won against the Crows by 3 points. This was of course the game where Sam Draper was not pinged for something that he should have been and allowed us to win it. So the obvious example of how close games are coin tosses. We got the lucky call. Now, we should not have allowed the game to be close, we had kicked 8.14 to 3/4 time but in the end this is another game against a bottom 6 team that we were lucky to win

R9 against West Coast, we won by 6 points. I have spoken enough about this. This was a disgraceful game that plenty of people refused to admit was a terrible performance because we won.

R11 against North, we won by 40 points, but got outscored in two quarters by a winless team. This was basically an one quarter performance. Again, I still some people try to defend this by saying well North have been better since that point. They have won two games for the season.

R12 against Richmond, we won by 12 points against a team that had lost 8 straight or whatever to that point. The gap was one point with a couple mins to go in the 3rd quarter and 5 points with about 10 mins to go.

R16 against West Coast, we won by 30 points, albeit with Q4 junk time goals. The Eagles were within 10 to 20 points from about the middle of the 3rd quarter to the middle of the last quarter, before we finally broke through. This was after we were up by 23 at HF only for them to close the gap to as little as four points during the third quarter.

R20 and R21 against the Crows and Saints. Well we lost.

If you spend all season just barely beating bottom 6 teams, and then you start losing to them too, that's probably a good sign that the team isn't much better than those teams.

We've been through this ride for the last 15 years. Sack a coach, make the finals in that coach's first or second season, get pumped in that final, get over-confident and think the team will do even better the next season and when that doesn't happen, sack the coach and do it all over again. As far as I'm concerned, thank god we're not wasting our time in the finals again and we can confront what's been obvious all season

 

[Zyzz]

Have to blood the kids. Who cares if we get lesser output for the next few games and next year. Heppell, lav, string and 2mp should be it for them.

 

[MiguelM]

Skills & forward coach should be sacked on the spot. Nobody leads, nobody.

We had zero pace across the ground.

Made Sharman look like a superstar.

 

[jannissary]

i think we got the result we deserved with the team we picked.

disappointing, but i can't bring myself to go nuclear, such a shame.

got beaten by a better team. who'd have thought that having a team of campaigners isn't actually good

 

[Milanista28]

Who doesn't want this list blown up? And I'm talking scorched earth, including the captain, if he wanted it.

 

[gillon]

Two years in, has Brad Scott really done much better than Rutten?

 

[MightyDon]

Have to blood the kids. Who cares if we get lesser output for the next few games and next year. Heppell, lav, string and 2mp should be it for them.

Add Kelly, Goldy and trade McGrath hes Heppell mk11

 

[Bunk Moreland]

Ah well

 

[Happyskeret]

Team selection to me is akin to shuffling around the deck chairs on the Titanic.

 

[Call Me Cake]

Teams that we ended their seasons (Adelaide, Saints) have come out firing against us and have won the 2nd time around.

 

[Mootsy]

 

[JDavey]

 

[BratPack]

I'm not even going to try.

They don't give a f***

So why should I?

ECO. Can't wait till the offseason to see how Dodoro f***s it up again.

 

[MiguelM]

Season on the line, zero fight in the third.

Defence a shambles. This defending space is garbage, you have to play close to your man.

3 weeks ago we were fighting for 2nd, FMD.

 

[BomberFan355]

 

[ant555]

Worst loss of probably the last couple of seasons. Saints flat out stink, their one wood is skinny anaemic runners who hate contact going absolutely hog wild, the only way they win is if you let them do it.

And **** oath did we let them do it.

They stink so much that they knocked the Swans over recently.

 

[jannissary]

dw guys, next week kelly, goldy & weidieman will come in