ESSENDON coach Brad Scott has urged his players to let the "sick feeling" of a diabolical end to the season drive them into 2024.
The Bombers sat fifth after beating Adelaide in round 17, but only defeated bottom teams North Melbourne and West Coast to capitulate in the final seven weeks and crash out of finals contention.
BOMBERS v MAGPIES Full match coverage and stats
Their 70-point smashing by Collingwood on Friday night followed a 126-point hiding from Greater Western Sydney at Giants Stadium six days ago.
Scott, who took charge at Tullamarine in September last year, has thrown down the challenge to the club to lift.
"We need to improve our list, we need to improve our football department, we need to improve right across the board," Scott said.
"The recency bias is real. In a perverse way, the players leave with a sick feeling in their stomach and that should drive their off-season.
"The observations of the last nine to 12 months is nowhere near where it needs to be, so we'll get that right."
Key players Jake Stringer, Sam Draper, Peter Wright, Jye Caldwell, Matt Guelfi and Jake Kelly all missed the clash with the Magpies with injury.
Essendon captain Zach Merrett said the Bombers, who last won a final in 2004, needed to move past being a "mediocre club".
"To come in year one (with Scott), play some of the footy we've played has been really promising," he told Channel Seven.
"We know we're still clearly a long way off the top six and probably the top eight to be fair, consistently, although we had some good performances throughout the year we weren't able to string together a lot of four-quarter performances.
"I'm optimistic, to get some time into some of our younger players was awesome but as the players spoke about in there, time to get past being a mediocre club and a club that falls away like that is definitely something we're going to keep working hard on.
"For our fans, as leaders and as players we're going to certainly keep trying to drive each other as hard as we can and there's going to be a lot of tough conversations the next couple of days I'm sure."
Stringer has undergone foot surgery this week after dealing with plantar fasciitis across the second half of the season.
He was sidelined between rounds 20 and 22 due to discomfort in his plantar fascia and has experienced an interrupted season due to the foot and soft tissue issues earlier in the year.
Recovery from surgery is typically around six weeks with Essendon expecting Stringer to start pre-season with the main group.
The Bombers aren't expecting many other players to undergo post-season surgery with Harry Jones and Zach Reid recently returning to training after operations during the season.
Jones underwent an ankle reconstruction in May after struggling with the issue across the first five games of the season.
Luckless former top-10 pick Reid was forced to go under the knife to repair his hamstring in July after reaggravating an existing injury, just when the defender was on the cusp of returning to the senior side.
Gun defender Jordan Ridley has almost fully recovered from the high-grade quad strain he suffered in round 19 and would have been available for selection if Essendon qualified for finals.
