Are we witnessing a premiership hangover from the Collingwood Football Club?
It's the question on everyone's mind.
Craig McRae’s side have had a shocking start to the season losing to the GWS Giants and Sydney Swans in successive weeks where they’ve produced a style of football that we haven’t seen for some time.
They were smashed last night and the 33-point final margin was flattering given how dominant the Swans were.
A lot of their issues stem from their defence and David King has revealed a stat that highlights a big problem that needs to be addressed sooner rather than later.
“There’s a massive gap in our competition between 95 per cent buy-in and 100 per cent buy-in and it’s not five per cent, it’s goals and you pay a price,” King told SEN's Crunch Time.
“I had a closer look this morning, Collingwood is a metre off from where they were last year and one metre is massive in our game at the moment.
“You don’t quite squeeze that player and force the fumble with pressure, you don’t quite arrive at the right time to get a handball receive and those metres everywhere kill you and that’s what Craig McRae has to fix.
“It’s not massive, but the lack of absolute investment may take a couple of weeks to get right, we’re seeing their backline exposed because of those metres and they’re easy to score against because of those things.
“Across the course of last year, they gave up a goal from every six entries and this year it’s close to every three.
“Those numbers are numbers that don’t take you to the finals let alone the promised land.
“He’s got to find that metre.”
Furthermore, the way Darcy Moore is playing is a shell of what we’re used to seeing from the star defender.
With Nathan Murphy missing, Collingwood's back six is looking all at see and that's evident with back-to-back games where they've conceeded over 100 points.
Throw in the fact that he’s coughing it up by foot, Moore’s current output is proving detrimental to the Pies.
“Collingwood are missing Nathan Murphy tremendously down back,” King added.
“Murphy is the one that allows Darcy Moore to do so much, I don’t know what’s happened to Darcy Moore.
“He’s been just a very average commodity over the first two rounds, his kick is shot, apart from the lateral kicks that everyone hits, any time he went forward last night he basically put the ball into the contest again.”
Collingwood won’t have long to stew on this loss with the 2023 Premiers backing up six days later on Thursday night at the MCG against the Saints.