Logic suggests Geelong should deal out a spanking to St Kilda at Marvel Stadium on Saturday night.
The Cats are fit, healthy and in form, having dealt Fremantle a 78-point hiding at home last Saturday. The Saints are banged up by injury, low on confidence, and were belted by Adelaide.
Yet it would be so St Kilda and its coach Ross Lyon were the Saints to pull an upset. Docklands isn't a favourite of Geelong's, the Cats having only a 50-50 record there over the last eight seasons. Indeed, the Saints have beaten Geelong the last three times they've met under the roof.
A fourth on Saturday would leave us asking what are becoming perennial questions about St Kilda. Are the Saints coming or going? And if it's the former, is Lyon the man to take them there?
Like perhaps even some St Kilda devotees, I'm not quite sure myself. Because the evidence on either side of that argument and the various "ifs" and "buts" keep going this way and that.
Take last week for example. No doubt the Saints were terrible against hardly a giant of the competition. But the weight of talent missing injured from their line-up (Max King, Mitch Owens, Cooper Sharman, Dan Butler, Liam Henry, Mattaes Phillipou, Dougal Howard and Paddy Dow) made a meaningful analysis nigh on impossible.
Of course Lyon had to trot out the'"injuries no excuse' line, but how could the absence of that clutch of players, most among the Saints' top 10, not be an explanation?
Given the longer-term nature of, say, Phillipou's leg injury, that group may not play together for at least a third of the season. Will that effectively make 2025 a 'mulligan'? Should it be?
You can't deny St Kilda's commitment to its coach, having only a week ago extended Lyon's contract by one year to the end of 2027. In his third season back in charge of the Saints, the football department has been rebuilt in his image, ditto the coaching panel.
The list has got younger and less experienced, though it's not the same extent of overhaul some other clubs have pursued, St Kilda going from an AFL ranking of 10th for age and 12th for experience to 14th and 15th this season. So when can the tangible results be rightfully expected?
Again, the waters are muddy. St Kilda performed above even its own expectations in 2023 to reach finals. It took a step backwards last year as the list rebuild continued, but still won at nearly 50%.
Things weren't looking even that rosy mid-season when the Saints were 3-8 and couldn't score to save themselves. But the St Kilda which finished 2024 was a different proposition indeed, winning five of its last six games and six of eight, knocking over finalists Sydney, Geelong and Carlton in the process.
The Saints topped 100 points just once in their first 13 games but did it four times in the last 11. Was that the 'real' St Kilda? Or the product of Lyon having finally run out of defensive-minded options and by his standards throwing caution to the winds?
Who knows? St Kilda desperately needs that version, though. Because one thing the season reviews served up and which has been typical of Lyon was the discrepancy between St Kilda's points scored and conceded, the Saints ranked a strong fifth for the latter, a dismal 15th for the former, as big a gap between defence and attack as any team had in 2024.
It was a bigger gap still in 2023, when the Saints were No.1 in the league for defence and just 15th for attack. And that yawning gap has been a consistent theme with Lyon-coached teams, as well as poor returns on the scoreboard.
Indeed, in his last six seasons as a senior coach (four with Fremantle, the last two with the Saints), Lyon's teams have been bottom four for points scored every time.
It goes without saying that isn't the profile of a successful team. Not even close. As important as defence is, none of the last seven and just two of the last 19 AFL premiership teams have ranked any lower than sixth for attack.
Lyon remains a highly-respected coaching figure, with significant support among the ex-player fraternity now dominating the football media landscape.
But there are still plenty of his peers who (usually privately) also recognise an intransigence of philosophy, and fear that when 'nothing to lose' becomes 'something on the line', Lyon instinctively reverts to a more cautious approach, one which while de rigueur 15 years ago, is passe now.
Critics would suggest his last four seasons at Fremantle are a cautionary tale, the top-of-the-ladder finish of 2015 turning to a four-game shocker the very next season, and Lyon in reality never really embracing the rebuild of which he often spoke, the Dockers placed between 13th and 16th every year thereafter until his 2019 sacking.
This latest contract extension gives him three seasons (including this one) to turn a group of promising kids, some OK veterans and a few journeymen into something substantial. Are King, Nasiah Wanganeen-Milera, Owens, Darcy Wilson, Phillipou and Marcus Windhager the nucleus of a team capable of pushing for top four or higher still next year or the year after?
You wonder if even Lyon truly knows, let alone Saints fans, such has been the stop-start, up-and-down mixed bag of results his time back at Moorabbin has been to date.
The promise would be seen in results like an upset win over Geelong on Saturday evening, an upset St Kilda on its day is quite capable of delivering. The danger is that the Saints continue to drift on a cloud of unfulfilled ambition, coaching caution and conservative selection stifling development.
Which way is St Kilda going to go? It may be some time yet before we can see enough evidence to provide a definitive answer. And that will remain the case, too, whether the Saints get smashed by the Cats this week or actually get up and win.
You can read more of Rohan Connolly's work at FOOTYOLOGY.