The Bombers' season hit a new low on Saturday night when they fell to bottom-placed West Coast for their sixth defeat in succession.
But rather than trying to deflect the intense scrutiny that the run of losses has brought upon him and the club, Knights has welcomed it.
"I think it's fabulous for our resilience as a football club if our players have to work through this situation," he said from Windy Hill on Tuesday morning.
"It's going to be great for our progress and development to work through this. I see it as a positive that we have to go through this, because out of this you work out who are strong people and who is going to stand beside you.
"[Last week] wasn't a bad week for me at all. It was a week to relish in the fact that when you see a club unite you feel very proud of that. The people around the club gave each other amazing support.
"So it [the media speculation] is irrelevant from my perspective."
After making the finals in his second year at the helm, pressure has mounted on Knights as the Dons' season has unraveled over the past six weeks.
The coach outright refused to comment on speculation about his future at the club and reiterated his belief in the plan he put in place after taking over from club legend Kevin Sheedy.
"The reality is that this club with a magnificent history was heading down, I suppose, the wrong track and had to start again with a really aggressive, stay-the-course vision," he said.
"We've stripped everything back and started again and the magnificent thing is the support you get from Essendon people … who are magnificent people constitutionally.
"They have a very, very hard mindset on life and they know that they've worked through hardship before and they know they'll come out the other side if they keep staying the course.
"It is a strong culture with strong people … and they're not going to be moved off the ball easy.
"Sure at the moment it's a tough period we're in - no question about that - and the reality is we're not good enough at the moment to win football games. It won't mean that we're not endeavouring all this week to win."
Knights didn't expect wholesale changes ahead of Saturday night's clash with North Melbourne, even though a review of the Eagles loss - which he described as "pretty gory vision" - yielded few positives.
He pledged to have his players hit the track hard in preparation for that match which he felt was the starting point of his side's long journey back to respectability.
"I'm pretty confident that they will start to play better football," he said.
"We can only move into our preparation mode and keep training hard and working with the group and that's what we're doing.
"It's really important we play with a little bit more dare and we get some respect back in the way we're playing our football - that's the most important thing.
"Wins will be a by-product of that better football - that's the reality of it. We've just got to play better team football, we've got to be better when we've got the ball in our hands and we've got to be better to defend once they've got it back.
"The reality is that as a 22 we've just got to present really strongly as we did (for much of) the first half of the season."
