Wallace explained that in the first half of the season the Tigers had played a disproportionate number of games against sides inside the top eight.
The Tigers are currently 12th, with a record of 3-1-7, and played some good football against some high-class opposition a few weeks ago without winning.
"We're now halfway through the season and we've played seven out of our 11 games against top-eight sides.
"I don't know where you selected us at the start of the year, but I don't think many people expected us to be beating those top sides.
"We certainly think that we've accounted ourselves alright against quite a few of them, but we've won two points against the top eight teams – a draw with the Bulldogs – out of those seven games.
"But when we've played against sides with the same sort of age bracket as us, four sides outside of the eight, we've beaten three of them, and had a kick after the siren to beat the fourth, so we've been able to handle that level, but we haven't been able to step up to the next level.
"We've got a full half of a season to go, where that flips around in the second half of the year, where we play more sides outside of the eight than inside, so there are still opportunities there,” Wallace said.
The Richmond coach also admitted that sides that are not winning will always be under pressure.
Over the last two weeks, the Tigers have fallen away dramatically, with veteran Nathan Brown describing the match against Sydney in round 10 as "a disaster", and Wallace said it was to be expected that losing brought criticism.
"You are always under pressure in this game when you're not winning, that's the nature of the business that we're in," he said. "It's no different for us than for any of the other sides.
"That's where we've been over the last couple of weeks, and we've got to turn it around."
