At times during Sunday's upset loss to Richmond the Hawks looked determined to deliver the ball to Lance Franklin at all costs when going forward. Franklin ended with a wasteful 3.6.
Clarkson said his players were not focusing unduly on delivering to Buddy, although opposition coach Terry Wallace said he felt the Hawks "put a few eggs in that basket" when attacking.
"There was times where [Mark] Williams and [Jarryd] Roughead were on and they would kick to them, and they were cut off because the execution of the kick was poor," Clarkson said after the 29-point loss.
"Other times in the last quarter, Williams was on for a lead and he tried to take a chest mark rather than in his hands, and it gets punched away.
"There were plenty of opportunities for all our forwards to have an impact on the game, and it was either due to the forwards' poor play or the midfielders' poor execution of the kick that disallowed us to do that.
"We're taking away a fair bit of credit to Richmond because I thought early on they were first class and really showed us how to play the game and win the hard footy."
Clarkson also shrugged off suggestions the pressure was mounting on Buddy as he neared the elusive ton, with Sunday's three goals leaving him on 94.
"He'll keep working at his game. It's not a focus for us, and I don't think it's too much of a focus for him at the present time," he said.
"We just want to generate enough footy into our forward line to give ourselves a chance to kick a big score.
"If he's on the end of them, great, if he's not, it doesn't concern us too much as long as Hawthorn are kicking goals.
"Unfortunately today, if you only kick 10, you're not going to win too many games of footy."
Clarkson said scoreboard pressure was where his side lost Sunday's game, with Richmond presenting as a "harder and hungrier" outfit in the first quarter before making the Hawks chase their tails.
But he said it was far from crisis time at the club, despite losing three games in the past five weeks.
"We've won 15 games of footy, so we're not about to crucify ourselves over one game," he said.
"Richmond, in my view, hunted the footy and had a lot more to play for early in the game, and it showed on the scoreboard very early."
