Prior to this season, the words 'competitive' and 'disciplined' were commonly attached to the Crows, who had experienced finals action in five of Craig's six years at the helm, but three of the worst losses in the club's history this year have damaged its standing in the game.
Adelaide experienced its biggest defeat since Craig was officially appointed as coach in 2005 at the MCG in round seven, losing to Melbourne by 96 points.
The club's losses to the Brisbane Lions (40 points) and North Melbourne (47 points) in the last two weeks weren't as dramatic, but the uninspired nature of the team's performance in both games drew parallels with the loss to the Demons.
Craig accepts the outside perception of his team had changed as a result of its wildly inconsistent season, and said it was important the club started to restore the faith of supporters and the wider football community.
"In the past, if you played Adelaide you knew you were going to have to beat them, but at the moment you're probably not sure what they're going to get," Craig said on Friday.
"You might get some very good stuff [from Adelaide]. You might get it for a full game or only for a quarter or a half, but you know you might also get [beat] them with a quarter or 20 minutes of [good] footy.
"That's not a very good reputation to have. No great competitor or team likes that stigma.
"You start thinking I can't trust Adelaide to come out and go 'bang' every week and you get a bit shaky on us. We don't want to sit in that category, but we're there at the moment.
"We have to accept that's where we are, but not accept that's where we're going to stay."
Craig said the club had done "everything possible" this week to try and re-start its season, which has been stalled since three-quarter time of the clash with Collingwood in round nine.
"Up until then [two weeks ago] even though the scoreboard wasn't necessarily ticking over as we would've liked we did some good things moving forward," he said.
"Clearly, the last two weeks we've been spinning the wheels a bit and we need some traction to start moving forward again.
"Our last two performances have not been good enough.
"A lot of it's about intent and [in the last two weeks] we've been nowhere near fierce enough.
"That's an area we can improve over night. Some of it's about up-drilling and some of it's about making some slight changes to what we do."
The Crows have recalled utility Andy Otten and forward/ruckman Shaun McKernan for the clash with West Coast at AAMI Stadium on Saturday.
Otten returns after six weeks out of the team with form and fitness issues and will play in defence rather than in the midfield.
Craig said McKernan had been recalled to help create an increased physical presence against the dangerous ruck combination of Dean Cox and Nic Naitanui.
"In talking to Brad Moran, he was really poor in that area [physicality] last week. That's why we brought Shaun McKernan back in because his performance in the SANFL was really good in that area," he said.
"It'll be a big challenge for Sam Jacobs and Shaun. Sam is a young ruckman too, but we want more from him and he understands that."
The Eagles have recalled premiership players Daniel Kerr and Sam Butler, and South Australian midfielder Brad Ebert for their second trip to AAMI Stadium this season.
