Essendon has impressed for the most part in the early stages of the 2023 season.
The Bombers were very good for three quarters against Collingwood before eventually going under at the MCG on Anzac Day.
Brad Scott’s side won the first quarter, trailed by two points at half-time, before kicking six goals to one in the third term to hold a 28-point lead at the final change.
They had held the Magpies to just six goals across three quarters before the floodgates opened and Craig McRae’s outfit piled on seven final-term majors to come away with a 13-point victory.
Champion Data’s Daniel Hoyne has assessed the contest and has highlighted one area of Essendon’s game which badly let them down on Tuesday.
“Collingwood’s ability to apply a pressure rating of 211 in that last quarter - where the AFL average is 180 - was extreme,” Hoyne said on SEN’s Sportsday.
“(Essendon’s) 27 kicks and 44 handballs in the last quarter was a strange makeup where you were just getting absolutely ambushed from behind centre to actually try and gain some territory and get some relief out of your back half. It just felt like they actually succumbed and invited that pressure.
“We’ve talked a lot about Essendon so far this year on this show and they’re doing a lot right.”
Hoyne says while the Dons are solid in the back half, they have had some struggles when it comes to defending the full ground.
“The one area of their game that is just on watch, but it held up for three quarters (on Tuesday), is their inability to be able to stop the ball movement going from one end of the ground to the other,” he added.
“Their ability to hold up in defensive 50 is strong, but they’re still allowing teams to go coast-to-coast and Collingwood were able to do that.
“At three-quarter time, Collingwood had only kicked six goals for the game, but half of them had come from ball movement going from one end of the ground to the other.
“It just gets me thinking that if you’re inviting entries and inviting ball movement and you’ve not been able to stop the opposition through the middle of the ground, it is holding up at the moment.
“But is it going to come to a stage where it’s going to get too challenging for this defensive group to hold up across the course of a 24-week season?
“We saw it unlock in the last quarter, but it’s still just a watch for me at the moment.”
The fourth-placed Dons have been quite good defensively so far in 2023, conceding 479 points at an average of 79.8 per game - the fourth best defence in the competition.
However, it is the full-ground ball movement from the opposition that has at times been an issue, highlighted by the Champion Data numbers.
They’ll look to bounce back from the Anzac defeat and improve their 4-2 record when they host Geelong at the MCG this Sunday.