Coach Michael Voss believes Carlton still have "plenty of runway" despite the Blues slipping to 0-3 in a concerning start to the season.
After leading for the majority of Friday night's contest against the Western Bulldogs, Carlton were overrun for the third-straight week to lose 12.11 (83) to 11.9 (75).
In a concerning trend, the Blues have kicked a combined eight goals in second halves across their three games in 2025.
Carlton didn't trail the Bulldogs until midway through the final quarter, and briefly reclaimed the lead, before conceding the last two goals of the match to go down to a team without stars Marcus Bontempelli, Adam Treloar, and Cody Weightman.
After losing to Hawthorn last week, Voss bristled at a question about their late-game fadeouts.
Voss was again asked about their second-half performances, admitting the criticism was "fair".
"We've got to find a way through that, so we'll go back have a look at it," he said.
"We should factor that in because if we probably had some better moments there to be able to control the ball, we would have sort of probably found ourselves on a different side of the ledger.
"But that's something we're going have to go and have a bit of a look at and see whether we can in the fourth quarter just do that a little bit better."
Carlton, who have played finals the last two seasons, could finish the round as low as 17th ahead of a monster Thursday night showdown with arch-rivals Collingwood.
A 0-3 start is not fatal, as the Brisbane Lions proved last season by recovering to win the premiership, but it is a major hurdle for a club whose last flag came back in 1995.
"In terms of the context of the season, we're at the start," Voss said.
"There's plenty of runway, but we've also got feedback to suggest that we've got to get better.
"We've got some real parts of our game that are a bit more obvious than others."
Carlton are worried about the fitness of forward Zac Williams, who was subbed out in the second quarter because of calf and Achilles concerns.
Williams suffered an ACL injury in 2023, and has battled soft-tissue problems since arriving at Carlton ahead of the 2021 season. He also ruptured his Achilles while playing for GWS in 2018.
Captain Patrick Cripps played out the game sore after landing heavily on his hip when he tried to leap for a big mark.
The dual Brownlow medallist took painkillers and received work from the physio in a bid to finish the game.
