A frustrated Steve Borthwick hit out at England’s lack of fundamentals amid a fourth straight Calcutta Cup loss to Scotland.
England were undone by a Duhan van der Merwe hat-trick, with Scotland claiming their best run of wins over the Red Rose men since 1972.
Borthwick's team started brightly and took a 10-0 lead, but capitulated under what turned into a stunning Scotland performance.
The England boss admitted his side’s litany of errors left them with no chance of victory.
England will go back to the drawing board next week, and Borthwick will hold some stern review meetings in a bid to stamp out the many shortcomings.
England could be on course to win just two of their five matches in the championship for a fourth year in a row.
The Red Rose men will host double Grand Slam-chasing Ireland at Twickenham next, then take on France in Lyon.
And a clearly dissatisfied Borthwick will demand improvements, and fast.
“I think what’s very clear that when you make that many handling errors at this level it’s very difficult to win, especially against a team of Scotland’s quality,” said Borthwick.
“We’ve got to make sure we respect what a good team Scotland are, and the chances they took.
“But ultimately we made it too easy for them to score, in terms of the chances they took.
“But they were also very clinical, a huge lesson for our team as we develop is that number of turnovers makes it very difficult to win.
“We’d all love progression to be a nice linear path, ultimately it’s not, especially when you’re trying to do it at this level.
“What you saw there is a team that’s trying to develop, add layers to the game, and made errors today.
“Sometimes you get away with it, and sometimes you get punished. Today’s a big learning experience. It’s a really painful lesson.
“This is a Scotland team that’s been together a long time, their 10-12-13 started together in a dozen Tests.
“That’s the first time our 10-12-13 has started together, and it looked like that, didn’t it?
“Our lack of cohesion in what we did showed too many fundamental errors.
“After a defeat you’re always disappointed. After a performance where you don’t think you’ve maximised your potential you’re always disappointed.
“It doesn’t matter the result or the scoreboard in that sense, if you don’t maximise your potential, it’s disappointing. And I don’t think the team maximised its potential.”
Jamie George captained England just 10 days after the death of his mother, Jane, from lung cancer.
The 33-year-old wore his heart on his sleeve, alongside a black armband in tribute to his late mum.
George’s captaincy has been led by a drive towards greater openness and closer relations with supporters.
Having lived up to that in so candidly talking about his mum’s passing, George then again fronted up in the wake of defeat.
“The foundations are good but as players we need to be better, and we need to execute the gameplan better than that,” said George.
“We knew it would be difficult coming here but we weren’t good enough.
“There are things we look back on and say, ‘this is what English rugby is going to be about’.
“We saw a lot of that in the first 20 minutes but we didn’t see much of it in the next 20. That will be pretty clear when we look back at it
“Hopefully the fans saw in the first 20 minutes a blueprint of how we want to play as a team, but it is now our ability to back that up for 80 minutes.”
