Essendon coach Brad Scott expects an immediate response from his players after a "totally unacceptable" lack of effort and intent in their humiliating AFL defeat to Adelaide.
The Bombers were comprehensively beaten inside and outside the contest last Saturday as the Crows ended their MCG hoodoo with a 61-point thrashing.
It left Scott's side reeling at 0-2 ahead of another difficult assignment against Port Adelaide at Marvel Stadium on Thursday night.
The task of finding a win to kick-start their campaign became even harder when Elijah Tsatas (broken finger) and Archie Perkins (quad) were ruled out.
Two days after the Adelaide debacle, Scott was still fuming as he sought to quickly engineer a dramatic form turnaround.
"The effort and intent is something that we base our game around and it was lacking, which was the most disappointing thing for me," Scott said.
"I was very clear (with the players) as to the areas that we were lacking and it's just totally unacceptable and not at the standard that we expect because we think that we're a capable group.
"We're working on all those system-based things all the time but you can have this fancy, first-class system and if you don't have pressure on the ball, I don't think Glen Jakovich and Bruce Doull combined are going to be able to defend against a complete lack of pressure on the ball."
Scott backed high-profile defender Ben McKay to find form after he became a focus of fan ire over the opening weeks of the season.
"If you look across his career he's been under a lot of pressure in the teams he's played in," Scott said.
"I've got a lot of faith and confidence in Ben. He's got a lot of good attributes.
"We put our last-line defenders under enormous pressure on the weekend.
"Criticism's part of this game and on Saturday we all deserved to get criticised. It's just the price of admission in this industry and Ben knows that.
"But he's a resilient character and my job as coach is not to respond to criticism about any of our players - my job is to coach them."
Essendon fielded the second-youngest team in the competition in round two, averaging 75 games per player.
But Scott refused to use inexperience as an excuse, describing that as a "cop-out".
"I'm not interested in even insinuating that there's any excuse with youth," he said.
"I think we have a capable team and we expect more."
Scott will be able to recall defender Jordan Ridley from concussion protocols as he makes at least two forced changes to his side to take on Port Adelaide.
Tsatas will have surgery on the finger he broke during the warm-up before he tallied a career-best 25 disposals against Adelaide, and will miss at least one match.
Perkins is also sidelined, while defender Lewis Hayes could earn a call-up after a strong VFL showing.
Gun midfielder Darcy Parish (back) is in line to play at VFL level as he plots his return to senior action.
"The temptation is there with Darcy to rush him back but the game on the weekend just showed that if you're a bit off you get exposed," Scott said.
"I'm not willing to put him in that position, or the team."
