Sometimes it's the simple things which can make the biggest difference. Like kicking straight. And it's as good an explanation as any as to Brisbane's remarkable turnaround this season.
While a 2-5 win-loss record after seven rounds suggested otherwise, the Lions, as coach Chris Fagan kept insisting at the time, were doing plenty right. What they couldn't do was convert.
After a 54-point loss to Greater Western Sydney in Canberra, Brisbane was still ranking first for inside 50 differential, first for time in forward half, and top six for fewest points against, contested ball and clearances.
Its conversion, however, was poor to say the least. Its accuracy rate of 43.4% was the worst in the AFL. Just 17.9% of its forward 50 entries were ending up as goals -- again, the worst in the league.
As the Lions have climbed from 13th after that GWS loss to second, just half-a-game off top spot, however, those numbers have soared. From Round 8 through to last Sunday's smashing of St Kilda, Brisbane has ranked sixth for accuracy and second for goals per inside 50. Statistically, it's probably that simple.
But perhaps an even better story, and not as easily measurable, behind Brisbane's revival, is its coach. Because if the Coach of the Year gong were being handed out now, Fagan, the affable Tasmanian, would surely have to be the winner.
At 2-5 and with four key players -- Keidean Coleman, Lincoln McCarthy, Darcy Gardiner and Adelaide recruit Tom Doedee -- all done for the year with serious knee injuries, there was a narrative about Brisbane and its coach begging to be written, and plenty did.
It was of a team which had been on a five-year climb towards football's Everest, creeping gradually closer to the summit before falling agonisingly short on Grand Final day last year against Collingwood.
As the new season began, Brisbane gave up a 46-point lead at home to Carlton, losing brilliant rebound defender Coleman in the process. The Lions would lose their first three games, and their first three at the previously impenetrable Gabba fortress, where they had gone 13-0 last season.
Adelaide recruit Doedee was lost to an ACL tear before he could even get on the park for his new club, then Gardiner and McCarthy suffered the same fate in the Round 8 win over Gold Coast
All this while Fagan himself had by then been through more than six months of personal anguish over the Hawthorn racism claims in which he had been implicated -- and vigorously denied -- along with former Hawk coach Alastair Clarkson and official Jason Burt.
The temptation was to surrender to apparent fate, and concede that with the gods seemingly not on Brisbane's side, perhaps the window of opportunity was closing fast. Fagan, though, while maybe privately simmering, publicly held his head up and remained positive not only about his own lot, but that of his team.
And perversely, though, perhaps the battle against greater adversity for both club and coach might end up being the final missing ingredient in Brisbane's premiership push.
Beyond merely the likes of Joe Daniher getting their kicking boots on, the Lions have had their resilience tested like seldom before, not to mention depth, and both have emerged not only unscathed, but enhanced.
While Brisbane has recovered from that 0-3 Gabba start to now sit 6-3, more significant is its road record of seven wins, three losses and a draw. After last year's four-point grand final loss, it has won its only game at the MCG this year, against Melbourne.
Necessity has certainly been the mother of invention for the Lions personnel-wise, not only via season-ending injuries, but the less-than-sparkling form at times of dynamic forward Charlie Cameron.
That has been a gap filled by the exciting Kai Lohmann, and more recently, Logan Morris, while Cam Rayner and Hugh McCluggage are chipping in more on the goalkicking front.
At the other end, Coleman's loss and the early absence of Irishman Conor McKenna looked to be a potentially fatal blow to Brisbane's defensive rebound. But at the age of 35, Dayne Zorko has stepped up to the plate with a brilliant season, his 26-disposal average and elite kicking efficiency the perfect replacement.
And now some troops are starting to return, Will Ashcroft with half-a-dozen games under his belt and looking increasingly comfortable, and key defender Jack Payne potentially returning for the final home and away round.
All the while, Fagan has stayed strong. At 63, the oldest coach in the AFL, Fagan has not only been around the footy world longer than his peers and in a greater variety of roles, but as a Taswegian who didn't play at the elite level, has arguably had more "real world" life experience than them also.
That, surely, has helped keep Brisbane's sustained assault on a premiership going when under the stewardship of others there could potentially have been more panic and a fatal implosion.
The Lions still loomed large even when the most fundamental of key indicators wasn't reading so well. And now Brisbane is even kicking straighter, it seems after a bumpy road early on, everything in 2024 might be finally falling into place.
You can read more of Rohan Connolly's work at FOOTYOLOGY