Essendon played so badly in their 21-point AFL loss to the Western Bulldogs it wouldn't have mattered if Joe Daniher's monumental brain fade had never happened.
The Bombers took the wooden spoon in 2016 with a team stripped of stars serving doping bans but coach John Worsfold is confident he hasn't seen his team play a worse game than Sunday's 14.20 (104) to 12.11 (83) loss.
"I don't even think in 2016 we potentially played that poorly," Worsfold said.
"Pretty much everything was poor - decision-making, our support for each other, our ball use, defending. It was all pretty poor."
But after being so thoroughly outplayed at Etihad Stadium, Essendon were a sneaky chance to steal the win after they mounted a late charge.
The Dogs led by a game-high 33 points in the last quarter but Daniher's howler snuffed out the challenge.
The big forward had the chance to bring the margin back to 10 points from close range with just more than five minutes left.
But he inexplicably handballed to Josh Green, who was immediately tackled with a rushed behind resulting.
When asked if he took any solace in the fight-back, Worsfold replied: "None at all.
"What would have made us a sneaky chance? (Daniher) kicking an easy goal from 10m out when you've taken a brilliant mark.
"But we couldn't even make a decision around that in the end.
"Even if we got within (10) points the pattern of the night was going to be that we wouldn't have been smart enough to be able to finish the game off."
Daniher's howler will get plenty of airtime but it was only a small piece of a hugely disappointing pie.
"I'll ask him, 'What were your options?' He already knows what they were," Worsfold replied when asked how he would counsel Daniher.
"He obviously believed that Green was going to get through and now he's got to work out what made him believe that and why it didn't happen."
Worsfold was unable to offer reasons for the poor performance but promised to get to the bottom of it and warned players would put their spots in jeopardy if they didn't respond next week.
