I think a team's midfield strength can be over-emphasised by quite a few on here.There's also more to football than midfields gillo.
The quality of players in Adelaide's back line and forward line is top 4 quality IMO.
I can understand why a few on here rate the Crows highly and personally I have them in 4th.
They did have the most settled lineup in 2016 by using only 29 players on their list during the season and some may argue they had a really good run of injury and they did. They also had a few players who had career best years especially in their forward line with Jenkins and Betts for example. They may not emulate the year they had last year in a scoreboard sense (Betts kicked 75 and Jenkins 62 from 24 games each) but I'm still confident Betts can kick say 60 goals and Jenkins will probably kick at least 40 which he's done the past couple of years permitting they play at least 20 games.
Adelaide is really focusing on it's flexibility this pre-season particularly in the midfield and in it's first pre-season game against Richmond they are going to play at least half of their side through the midfield apparently. Brodie Smith mentioned that it was important to have plenty of players playing through the midfield to ensure a team's midfield becomes more unpredictable and also allow the players to be fresher than if they played longer stints in there.
There are legitimate concerns for the Crows top midfielders going into the season with Sloane going to miss all of the JLT, B Crouch remaining doubtful for round 1 and Thompson playing little part of the JLT with a shoulder injury, so it's not ideal for those Crow's midfielders going into the season.
However, I think some people over-emphasise the midfield in today's game and Adelaide's strength in it's back line and forward line should be able to at least overcome the deficiency they have in the midfield and at least make the top 8 while also remaining a solid chance to make top 4.