If history was your guide, you could forgive Adelaide for already giving up on season 2024. After all, in the past half century, just one team, Sydney in 2017, has started a season 0-4 and gone on to play finals.
But maybe, sometimes, you just need to find the right slice of history. Along with a determination to look for any sort of positives. And perhaps there's still some hope for the Crows on those fronts.
Adelaide have so far played Gold Coast, Geelong, Fremantle and Melbourne. While three of those opponents didn't play finals, the Suns, Cats and Dockers already all look vastly improved on last year's models.
Only one of the Crows' defeats has been by any more than 19 points, hence their percentage of 75, miles ahead of the other winless teams: Hawthorn, North Melbourne and West Coast.
Perhaps, though, there's an even brighter light at the end of the tunnel in the shape of last year's AFL ladder.
As late as Round 15 last season, Sydney, GWS and Carlton occupied 13th, 14th and a miserable 15th spot on the ladder respectively. With 14 games played by everyone, the Swans and Giants had won just six each, and the Blues only five and a draw.
GWS and Carlton would, of course, go on to narrowly lose preliminary finals, and the Swans were pipped in an elimination final. Those are three sizeable turnarounds. Can we really already say definitively that Adelaide aren't capable of something similar?
Not, I'd argue, when the gap between most teams in the competition is increasingly wafer thin. Sure, we bemoan West Coast's apparently abject state, but wasn't that the same team which last week was neck and neck with Sydney at three-quarter time and lost by only 26 points?
The point being that it doesn't necessarily take a whole lot of tweaking to make a substantial difference to a team's performance. And Adelaide aren't doing everything wrong, even in defeat.
What is actually looking more and more the case, though, is that in focusing much time and energy in shoring up their perceived Achilles' heel of defence, the Crows may have sacrificed their "one wood", their attack.
At the moment, Adelaide rank third for lowest average inside 50 entries conceded, a vast improvement on their ranking of 10th last year. They're conceding fewer scores from stoppages, that ranking having gone from 14th to eighth. And their more deliberate ball movement has seen their defensive 50 to inside 50 transition ranking go from ninth to fourth.
But perhaps that last figure, ostensibly a positive, is some guide to the alarming offensive fall-off, too. Last year, Adelaide were the No.1 scoring side in the competition, averaging 95 points per game, but currently sit second-last, averaging just 57 points.
Riley Thilthorpe's absence hasn't helped, but Taylor Walker and Darcy Fogarty have managed just seven goals between them from a combined seven appearances. Could quicker ball movement have created easier and more frequent opportunities for the pair?
The Crows' small forwards haven't been playing their roles particularly well, either.
Izak Rankine has been used with some effect at more centre bounces so far this season, but maybe coach Matthew Nicks has robbed Peter to pay Paul a little, because the Crows are the second-worst team in the competition at losing possession in the forward 50, where their groundball get ranking has dropped alarmingly from first to 16th.
"We've got to improve our skills and improve our forward-of-centre work," Nicks said on Wednesday. "At the moment, that connection's just not where it needs to be, but we've got the opportunities."
If you're a side sitting 0-4 and desperate to break the ice, converting opportunities is certainly a preferable issue to have than, say, a defence continually split open, like North Melbourne's has been, or opponents running the ball from end to end without enough resistance, as has been Essendon's situation for some time.
If Nicks and co. want another point of encouragement ahead of Saturday afternoon's clash with Carlton, it might be the Crows' record against the Michael Voss-coached Blues; Adelaide having won both such clashes by 29 and, last year, 56 points. Though it should be pointed out both games were at Adelaide Oval, while this is at Marvel Stadium, where Adelaide have won just one of their past seven matches.
It's a massive challenge. Again, however, the upside is considerable. Pass this test, and Adelaide have a string of eminently winnable games ahead, with seven of their next 10 at home, and two of the three road trips against North Melbourne and Hawthorn.
Win a decent slice of those and Adelaide and finals wouldn't seem the stuff of fantasy, but instead, as the Swans, Giants and Blues themselves showed last year, the stuff of very recent history.
You can read more of Rohan Connolly's work at FOOTYOLOGY.