Adelaide's drop off was stark in their 59-point loss to Greater Western Sydney on Saturday and their review was understandably tough.
However, the Crows don’t expect the loss to become a trend.
Matthew Nicks’ men were only a little off the level they’d been at in recent weeks when beating Richmond and the Western Bulldogs, however the Giants made them pay with an 11-goal to two first half.
Assistant coach Nathan Van Berlo, a 205-gamer at the club, suggested the review of the loss revolved around the differences in the Crows' playing style between the Round 7 performance and those prior.
“I guess you could say it was an uncomfortable review, but required,” he told SEN SA Breakfast.
“When you have a performance like that where you don’t match the intensity of the opposition you come up against, we knew what to expect against GWS … so there were some examples from the game that needed to be shown that were significantly different to what we’d been doing in the month prior which led to us being really competitive and showing great resilience.
“Ultimately, it’s going to be a really good learning from the group.”
The Crows’ have only put in two poor efforts this year, the first coming against Collingwood in Round 2.
Since that game, and Crows football director Mark Ricciuto’s subsequent comments savaging the club, they’d won three of four games and fell just four points short of Essendon before the GWS game.
Midfielder Rory Laird admitted the Giants loss was a “shocking performance” on the Crows’ behalf.
“Shocker is a good way of putting it, but I don’t think it’s a trend though, it’s been one game,” he said on SEN SA’s The Run Home.
“Every other result we’ve had this year has been really close and there are a few games that could have gone either way.
“It’s the first time that’s happened this year and it was just a shocking performance and completely not up to the standard of what we’ve been delivering and what we expect to deliver.”
Saturday’s game was just the first time Adelaide entered a contest as favourites and The Run Home co-host Michelangelo Rucci suggested that perhaps the Crows had been getting ahead of themselves.
However, Laird says that’s not the case.
“It’s probably not getting ahead of yourself, it’s not the right way to put it,” he replied.
“But you can’t even be five to 10 per cent off. If some people are it becomes infectious within the team. The competition is too even to be that far off. We probably excepted that we’d just roll out again and do what we did against the Bulldogs
“We saw something a little bit different. They (the Giants) pretty much punched us right in the mouth and the game was over at half-time.
“You can’t just be expecting to rock up. There are too many solid teams who are willing to take that away from us.
“I don’t think it had anything to do with being the favourites, I think it’s just the matter of the mindset we came in with and it was off and it showed.”
Adelaide enter Sunday's match against Carlton at Marvel Stadium as underdogs.