Forwards: Curnow, McKay.
Midfielders: Cripps, Walsh, De Koning (when fit).
Defenders: Weitering, Saad.
That is the list of Carlton’s no doubt about it, don’t even debate it, A players.
There are at least two across every line, and all bar De Koning play critical positions.
Does any other team in footy have that?
They should be better than getting run over by Port Adelaide, the Western Bulldogs and GWS and going life and death with North Melbourne, but why aren’t they?
Coaching.
This isn’t to say that Michael Voss is a bad coach.
He isn’t, he just is not an inventive one.
And when he does try and get inventive, like he did on Friday night against Port where he pushed Curnow up the ground late in the third quarter to really open up the forward line like Collingwood do, he got away from it too quickly (even though that actually worked and Matt Kennedy kicked a goal from it)
The work rate from Matt Kennedy to get his mark and goal 🔥#AFLBluesPower pic.twitter.com/Ab6eeOVlX7
— 7AFL (@7AFL) July 26, 2024
They reminds me of last year’s Philadelphia Eagles.
In their Super Bowl run the Eagles basically ran the “my guys are better than your guys offence” and it worked.
Shane Steichen was an Occam’s Razor type of co-ordinator who stuck with what worked and ran it again and again.
A lot of times what worked was go-balls to AJ Brown and running it down opposition throats.
Last season, Steichen was gone but the Eagles effectively tried to run the same type of stuff and it didn’t work as well.
By the end of the year, they looked old and out of ideas.
That’s how Carlton looks to me.
They rely on Cripps and Walsh to get the ball from stoppage, but then they don’t have an easy answer when they do get their hands on the ball.
They just hack kicks forward and hope that Charlie Curnow, who played a lone hand against Port Adelaide, can either mark it or bring it to ground.
They’re like Carmy in The Bear, talented but make life harder for themselves and everyone else.
Compare that to a team like Fremantle who put on a clinic in setting up around stoppage against West Coast.
Fremantle, granted, have a better midfield than Carlton pound-for-pound.
But the Fremantle players are also put in a better position to succeed.
In one small passage of play in the third quarter right as Fremantle started zooming past West Coast, Caleb Serong, as usual, got first hands to the ball.
He didn’t even have to look back as he knew he had Bailey Banfield behind him.
Banfield looked to open the game up and handballed in-board, again without even needing to look to Brandon Walker who had walked up to play as an extra at the stoppage.
He again handballed inboard to Andy Brayshaw who by this point was in the corridor and in space, maybe a second has passed by this point.
Brayshaw, instead of straightening up and kicking to a 3v3, kept going wide in the knowledge that Jeremy Sharp’s running patterns from the wing would have him screaming inside 50.
He bet that the West Coast winger, a team that lacks endeavour at the best of times, wouldn’t be running back hard to go with Sharp.
Brayshaw was right, Sharp took a chest mark and Freo got a shot.
It was surgical, unthinking.
That unthinking ball movement from stoppage doesn’t happen to Carlton.
Carlton’s ball movement in general lacks system beyond “get the ball to the Italians.”
All season Carlton has been good at scoring from the back half sitting third in that category on the season, but over the last five games, their worst run of the season, they’ve slipped to seventh while still sitting fifth in rebound 50s.
I think it’s because teams have cottoned onto the fact that Carlton effectively attack in straight lines coming from the back half.
So rarely do you see them open the game up from the back half.
It’s even more rare to see them switch an angle when they get it past centre wing.
When you see them 70m out, you can set your watch to a kick onto Charlie or Harry’s head.
Early in the season I was counting Carlton uncontested marks inside 50, the most I counted was four in the round eight game against Collingwood.
There is zero dynamism going inside 50, that’s how a team with two of the best marking key forwards in the modern game take the 11th most marks inside 50 in the AFL.
Port Adelaide, despite having bad key forwards takes the most.
I want to use one passage of play to illustrate my last point around general Carlton sloppiness as well as the last point around general method of entry.
They are not a detail-oriented team, especially defensively.
The Blues clearly prioritised Zac Butters as the man to stop and put Alex Cincotta on him, Butters can be tagged out of games and it was was the right move.
Right as Port was making their move in the third quarter, Dan Houston won a free kick in the middle of the ground.
Instead of banging it in hope to his ailing key forwards Charlie Dixon and Esava Ratugolea, Houston lowered his eyes and saw Zac Butters drifting inside 50 on his own about 35m out directly in front.
Houston hit him and Butters had a shot he should have kicked but missed to make 54-32.
The difference between the detail in Port’s game compared to Carlton’s is like comparing a no-fat movie like Whiplash to one of those classic two episodes too long Netflix shows.
The difference in efficiency and attention to detail can’t be overstated.
Carlton couldn’t quite get to Port’s tempo.
The Blues are generally bad defensively and are the 13th best defence in the league, but they’re particularly terrible at defending stoppages giving up the most points from stoppage in the last five games.
That, again, is a detail stat.
Teams just walk out the front of stoppages against the Blues as Port Adelaide did time and again, and the Blues don’t adjust.
In the Port game, Port Adelaide walked out the front of stoppages time and again often through Travis Boak.
Boak sat aggressively at the apex of stoppages around the ground and Port chained the ball with the intent of getting the ball to Boak cleanly to go inside 50.
Port punished the Blues and Boak alone had 9 inside 50s (Port won the inside 50 count by 11). Carlton didn’t adjust at all to Boak’s positioning.
Beyond just Boak, Port won the clearances by 10 and kicked 6.8 from stoppages to Carlton’s 2.3.
Carlton’s list is not perfect.
They are slow (Jason Horne-Francis looked like he was on one of those Mario Kart rainbow speed burst things every time he got the ball in space on Friday night) and do have injuries (namely De Koning, McKay and Zac Williams this week).
But that’s the point.
Teams with great systems can overcome injuries to key players.
Those Richmond sides of the late 2010s, for instance, constantly lost players and it didn’t matter because the system was bulletproof.
The Hawthorn dynasty was the same, they lost Buddy Franklin and won the premiership the next year for goodness sake.
This Blues side isn’t that, and Zac Williams isn’t Buddy Franklin.
They’re an Aaron Sorkin film.
Full of good actors but the bones are just not good enough to be anything other than a film that is full of both good actors and structural holes.
The Blues of 2024 are proof of the adage that a champion team beats a team of champions.