Melbourne coach Simon Goodwin has called for the Demons to become more "ruthless" as the club faces another season not playing AFL finals.
With a top-eight spot on the line, Melbourne managed just four goals on Monday night in a 14-point defeat to Fremantle in Cairns.
It was the Demons' second loss in five days to a developing team that won't feature in the finals after being outplayed by Sydney last Thursday.
The Demons have won just 12 of 37 games since their breakthrough preliminary final appearance in 2018 - which was the club's first post-season campaign in 12 years.
Goodwin said the whole club's mentality had to change, not just the players, if Melbourne wanted to shake its underachiever tag.
"As a club, I think we need to become a more much more ruthless club and really grow up and start to perform in these type of games," he said.
"This is a great position for our club to be in, to experience this again after last year, but we need to start to become more mature as a club and more unconditional in the way we go about our business.
"It's everyone. We're in this together and we're trying to change shape as a footy club about where we've been seen for a long amount of time.
"To do that it takes a whole collective group of people. We can't have results like tonight.
"I think when teams are really unconditional in the way they go about their footy, their business, day-in, day-out, your method will stack up and get results and we're just not quite there yet."
The Demons never looked like defeating Fremantle in the driving North Queensland rain, having slotted just two goals with less than 10 minutes remaining before making a late surge.
Melbourne now have to win their remaining games against GWS and Essendon and rely on other results falling their way.
"Our destiny has been taken out of our hands by how we've performed, but we've got two games to go and that's our challenge as a footy club to respond," Goodwin said.