Are Essendon the sleeping giants of season 2025?

[FootyGuru]

Essendon will finish near the middle of the table and field one of the youngest teams in the comp.

 

[Howard Littlejohn]

Little steps mate. The JHF and Reid what ifs must be painful

Not the Reid one, not tanking is better than tanking.
JHF can, however, get rogered brutally by many big ones.

 

[JayJ20]

I guess that's true enough. Maybe a bit more chance of beating top sides than previously, but could easily crash to Richmond twice.
Essendon and Melbourne look set to be in this category, though Melbourne's top end talent is stronger and if the Dees actually play as a team (very doubtful given how many seemed to want out) maybe they could be good-ish.

Our problem is that we have some sides that we always lose to. Currently it's Geelong, Port, Brisbane and Sydney. Used to be Bulldogs and Richmond. Those 4 are almost guaranteed losses and we can't start the year 6 games down. Not sustainable.

We play Geelong, Sydney, Carlton, Bulldogs, Gold Coast and Richmond twice. If say we lose to Geelong and Sydney twice, that's 4 losses. Split Bulldogs and Carlton (generous) and we're already at 6 losses. Lose to Port and Brisbane, that's 8 losses. Add Collingwood who we almost never beat on ANZAC day and Fremantle away and we're at 10 losses easily. Add Gold Coast away who've built a fortress at home and we're at 11.

11 losses can't get you into the 8 or you scrape in during uncompetitive years. We also never have a good percentage (109% in 2021 was our highest since 2002) which means we never really have the percentage advantage.

Until we beat Geelong, Sydney, Port and Brisbane and until we have a good percentage, we won't really get far.

 

[Seadog]

Yes, they play exactly how the Giants would.........if they were asleep.