After a record low score and 100-point loss on the big stage of Friday night football, such intense scrutiny was unavoidable. As Craig himself said at his press conference: "It's the scoreboard that gets you in the end." He also alluded to the ferocious nature of media reports and the unworkable environment they can create.
As an industry, we should treat our people with more respect.
Our senior AFL coaches are invariably intelligent, hardworking and successful in their own right.
Understandably, the public's interest in the role leads to high levels of accountability, but the bloodthirsty and even spiteful outcomes it can produce don't reflect the quality of the people involved.
Who can forget Danny Frawley being spat at by supporters in the weeks before his demise as Richmond coach? Or Terry Wallace having to explain to his young family why their dad was depicted on the back page of the paper with a noose around his neck under the headline Dead Man Walking?
The biggest single decision a football club makes is that of its senior coach. In the increasingly professional world of AFL football, this is one process with much scope for improvement.
My feeing is that the trend towards succession planning has a lot of merit.
Previously, the sacking of a coach meant the whole football department would go with him. A new coach would then embark on a five-year plan and move the club in a completely new direction.
If that failed, the club would simply appoint another coach in the hope that this would magically provide the answer, erasing any continuity or intellectual property gained along the way.
The handover from premiership coach Paul Roos to long-time assistant John Longmire at the Sydney Swans hasn't received the 'air time' it deserves.
The Swans clearly felt the system and culture created by Roos was something to preserve. Perhaps Roosy understood that, regardless of his popularity and success, any playing group needs a change after nearly 10 years.
Roos was able to transition out of coaching with class and the respect owed to a champion player and coach; at the same time, the Swans have benefited enormously from the fresh start a new coach brings - a coach who is one of their own and who they developed over a number of years.
Collingwood's coaching succession plan is the most debated football story this year.
There's logic the club's desire to secure a once-in-a-generation club icon, Nathan Buckley, as their next senior coach.
There will always be an element of risk and uncertainty in appointing a new coach, but in this case the Magpies seem to have done a good job of diminishing it. Buckley's unique skills, along with the opportunity he has been given to work on any areas of deficiency over the past two years, make him incredibly well-placed to succeed.
And for Mick Malthouse, it seems like a rare chance for a coach to end 12 years at one club on a massive high before phasing into a subsequent, lucrative role of supporting the structures he himself has put in place.
A key question will be whether or not the two personalities involved have the same desire for it to succeed.
Too often it seems that great football people put their reputations on the line to coach AFL teams only to exit the game like deflated boxers, KO'd in the 10th round and reduced to a shadow of their former selves. Consider the way Malcolm Blight was treated by St Kilda, or the 16 years it took AFL legend Kevin Bartlett to forgive his own club.
Only time will tell if succession planning proves to be an effective model - for now it seems that any change from the current system is worth pursuing.
The views in this story are those of the author and not necessarily those of the clubs or the AFL
