The Blues failed to kick a goal in the first half of their 44-point loss to Adelaide, with the team's structure resulting in them struggling to transfer the ball from end to end.
Once they did have the ball in attack, the task of finding a Carlton jumper inside 50 was virtually impossible at times.
"That was the worst half of footy in my time as coach that we've had at the club," Ratten said at Visy Park on Tuesday.
He said his team had attempted – with success – to drop players into the backline to help out its defence in recent weeks, but took the practice to the "nth degree" at the weekend.
"Sometimes you implement some new strategies or put some things in place … I thought we just over-corrected," he said.
"You look at our front 50 and no-one's up there and you're just thinking 'Well, we're never going to score'.
"We had to virtually run and handball the ball from the back pocket to the forward pocket – good luck, it's pretty tough.
"I'll take full responsibility; that's the team that runs out and if that's how it's been taken, well, I need to change that a little bit. I just think we over-corrected that dramatically in the game.
"We didn't want 18 blokes back of centre when we had a ball up in our back pocket or a point kick-in. It just makes it too hard to score – especially with a three-goal breeze."
While Ratten has been happy with the more rounded game of Brendan Fevola this season, he admitted his goalkicker was also guilty of creeping too far down the ground against the Crows.
"There's no doubt about it; he got too high on the weekend," Ratten said.
"But at the end of the day he kicked 1.5 and one out of bounds on the full, so he had seven shots at goal.
"So would we be talking about it had he kicked 5.1 or 4.2 or whatever it was? But he didn't, and I suppose as a full-forward he cops a little bit of flak for that."
Ratten defended his star's form, and said Fevola had the better of his one-on-one duels with Adelaide's Ben Rutten.
As for Fevola's recent lean spell in front of goal, Ratten said his spearhead was not being hampered by any injury.
"There's no physical [reason] … he's fine, he's fit," he said.
"I think the Gold Coast one (versus Fremantle) was just a bit of tightening in the glute which we thought might have been a back-related hamstring; he sort of felt a little bit of a twinge so we just got it checked out and it was right.
"The heel's pretty good now [too]. He might get the odd little bit of soreness but all in all, I think if you look at most players in the competition they carry some sort of little niggle for a while."
