The Crows slumped to 5-7 following Saturday's 38-point loss to Richmond at the MCG, and coach Brenton Sanderson conceded the task of climbing back into the top eight was now "really difficult".
He said the Crows would use their mid-season break to review what had gone wrong in the last fortnight, with Saturday's defeat following last week's 77-point loss to the Sydney Swans.
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"We've almost got to go through undefeated for our final 10 games … 5-7 makes it hard, makes it really difficult from here," Sanderson said post-match.
"We've got two weeks to prepare ourselves for the Suns away, which will obviously be a tough game as well.
"Our form was OK until the last two weeks, and then we've put in two really poor performances.
"We'll find out the reasons why and make some adjustments as a team, try and reinvent how we play."
Sanderson said Saturday's loss had done little to address the concerns he had following last week's loss to the Swans, which had "damaged our brand pretty badly".
He said the coaching panel had debated whether to send an opponent to Richmond star Brett Deledio, who racked up 17 possessions (14 uncontested) in the first half as the Tigers made their match-winning break.
"We kept trying to send players to him and that would free up (Bachar) Houli," Sanderson said.
"They were the two players we were most concerned about, and of course (Chris) Newman.
"'VB' (Nathan van Berlo) did a pretty good job after half time, he limited Deledio's influence.
"But more Richmond players bobbed up … we left it to too few."
Adelaide lacked effective targets in attack on Saturday, with tall forwards Josh Jenkins, Tom Lynch and Shaun McKernan combining for three goals.
Midfielder Scott Thompson, who finished with 29 possessions but pushed forward for periods, said the players needed to move beyond injured forward Taylor Walker and Kurt Tippett, who is now with the Swans.
"At the end of the day, there is no Tippett and there is no Walker, so we can't keep complaining about that," he said.
"It's not the reason we're losing games.
"There's a lot of factors where we're just not good enough at the moment and we need to improve a number of areas to get ourselves going in the right direction again.
"I'm sick of talking about it, the club's sick of talking about it. They're not playing, and we need to get better."
Thompson conceded it was a tough ask for the Crows to now play finals but said there was still belief in the group to rediscover their best football after the bye.
