2024 AFL Season Previews: Essendon
Can the bolstered Bombers fly up the ladder?
I look at how things are shaping up at Windy Hill.
2023 ladder position: 11th (11 wins, 12 losses)
2023 best-and-fairest: Zach Merrett
Senior coach: Brad Scott
Story of the season
Following the messy sacking of Ben Rutten following the 2022 season, and the public pursuit of Alastair Clarkson, Brad Scott was appointed senior coach ahead of the 2023 season. Scott was an intriguing choice. He did very well to take North Melbourne to consecutive preliminary finals in 2014 and 2015 and served as the AFL’s General Manager of Operations before getting the call from Essendon. His brief was straightforward: make the Bombers more competitive. Did he succeed? If you’d asked Essendon fans during the bye, 90 percent would have said yes. The team was 8-5 and notched impressive wins against Melbourne (in Gather Round) and Carlton to go with respectable losses against top four mainstays Collingwood and Port Adelaide. But things got pretty bad after the bye. Essendon won just three of their final 10 games, which included blowout defeats to Geelong, Greater Western Sydney, and Collingwood, and narrow wins against the bottom two, to finish 11th. Missing the eight means Essendon’s wait for a finals win will extend past 20 years. Safe to say Bombers fans weren’t as happy in August as they were in June.
Summary of game style
The stats confirm what the eyeballs suspected: Essendon love to keep the ball. In 2023, they ranked highly in virtually all the benchmarks of uncontested footy: they were #1 for kicking efficiency, #2 for uncontested marks, and #2 for lowest contested possession share (the ratio of contested to uncontested possessions). Basically, Essendon seek to get the ball into the hands of their best users, chiefly Zach Merrett and Mason Redman, and use them to pick out teammates or break the lines to quickly advance the ball up the field. The style is also borne out of a desire to hide their two biggest weaknesses – clearance work and defensive pressure (particularly in transition). The Bombers were the second-worst team in the AFL for clearances and opponent clangers per game, and despite Brad Scott specifically highlighting it as an area of focus before the season started, 16th for tackles and defensive pressure acts. As a result, the Bombers had the third-worst inside 50 differential in the league, ahead of only North Melbourne and West Coast. In an era where more and more teams look to turn the ball over close to their attacking goals, Essendon are something of an outlier.
List changes
In:
Nate Caddy (2023 National Draft, pick #10)
Luamon Lual (2023 National Draft, pick #39)
Archie Roberts (2023 National Draft, pick #54)
Vigo Visentini (Rookie Draft)
Xavier Duursma (traded from Port Adelaide)
Todd Goldstein (free agency – North Melbourne)
Jade Gresham (free agency – St. Kilda)
Ben McKay (free agent – North Melbourne)
Out:
Brandon Zerk-Thatcher (traded to Port Adelaide)
Massimo D'Ambrosio (traded to Hawthorn)
Alastair Lord (delisted)
Cian McBride (delisted)
Rhett Montgomerie (delisted)
Anthony Munkara (delisted)
Andrew Phillips (retired)
Will Snelling (delisted)
James Stewart (delisted)
Patrick Voss (delisted)
Anthony McDonald-Tipungwuti (retired)
List profile
Number of top-10 draft picks: 12 (most)
Average age at Opening Round: 24.4 (seventh-youngest)
Average number of games played: 75.5 (seventh-fewest)
Essendon have the seventh-youngest list in the AFL. But their best players are all aged between 25 and 28. I’m sure there are Bombers fans who might quibble with that definition (why no Nic Martin, for example), but it’s still pretty striking. Cast the net a little wider to include Sam Draper and Andrew McGrath, and that still holds true. You can see the logic: a nucleus of similarly-aged players, supplemented by wily veterans and promising youngsters, is basically shorthand for “premiership window”. But Essendon’s performances don’t suggest they’re in one. The problem with all your best players being in their mid-to-late 20s is that you can’t reasonably expect significant improvement at that age. Indeed, you’re more likely to see the early signs of decline. Essendon have some good young players with unique traits. But they’ll need to be really good to offset the expected loss in output from the likes of Merrett, Wright, Parish and Langford over the next 3-4 years.
Eight incoming players and 11 outgoing players (after eight ins/10 outs before the 2023) suggests Scott believes his list still needs surgery before it can truly compete at the top end.
Line rankings
Defence: Average
Midfield: Above Average
Forwards: Above Average
Ruck: Above Average
The case for optimism
Essendon’s best is already pretty good, and Brad Scott has a track record of improving a team’s minimum performance level (their “floor”). The three best wins of last season – against Melbourne, Carlton and Adelaide – should serve as a blueprint for the precise football the Bombers want to play.
On paper, the four main incoming players should improve the side. Ben McKay adds much-needed size to what was a competitive but small backline. Despite being 35, Todd Goldstein is probably still a top-quartile ruckman, and should be a great mentor for Sam Draper. Jade Gresham will provide pressure (and high-grade kicking) to a forward line that allowed opposition defences to walk it out too easily, while freeing up Archie Perkins to move to the midfield. As for Xavier Duursma, you can see why they took the punt. It’s easy to forget that, when he broke out at Port Adelaide alongside Connor Rozee and Zak Butters, lots of people thought he would end up the best of the lot. While that hasn’t exactly panned out, a rejuvenated Duursma is an asset for any side.
Despite rarely having access to the top end of the draft, a consequence of being stuck in the purgatory of 7th to 12th for years, the Bombers have some talented youngsters that look ready to take the next step in 2024. Nic Martin, Ben Hobbs and Elijah Tsatas have all shown they have what it takes to be good AFL players. Reports suggest that Martin has been training at half-back throughout preseason, possibly with a view to moving into a Nick Daicos-style role that’ll see him push up to the contest and become more involved in attacking chains.
The case for pessimism
While Essendon’s good is good, their bad can be absolutely putrid. Even if you accept that a young and inexperienced list got tired at the end of a long season, their Round 23 capitulation to Greater Western Sydney was the most insipid performance all season by a side not named West Coast. Their performance against Collingwood the next week wasn’t much better. Both games highlighted the Bombers’ big weaknesses in the turnover game and defending transitions. If part of Brad Scott’s first-year performance was measured by his ability to eliminate the demoralising fadeouts that have plagued Essendon since the Matty Knights days, then it has to be considered a failure.
Young players hit the wall. We all know that. And Essendon’s run home was tough. But when you look at the stats, a more troubling pattern emerges. The Bombers showed very little ability to prevent their opponents from executing their game plans. They were in the bottom four for preventing opposition inside 50 entries and second-last for opposition clangers per game. Pressure is a big deal in modern football. You need a plan to knock your opponents off their stride. And, at least in 2023, the Bombers didn’t do that enough. (A late note of optimism: in their pre-season game against Geelong, they laid 17 tackles inside 50 – more than in all but one game from 2023.)
There’s also the broader point that pessimism and Essendon supporters have been regular bedfellows for the past few years. It’s exciting being good. It’s also kind of exciting being bad, partly because it’s funny, and partly because you can always imagine being good in a few years. But constantly existing in the band between “mediocre” and “OK”, especially when your main rivals are winning flags or at least finals, isn’t much fun.
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Breakout player
Elijah Tsatas tantalised Bombers fans with his four-game cameo towards the end of the season, which included 23 possessions and four clearances in just his second game. Statistically, he was in the top 10 among first-year players for a bunch of important midfield metrics. Early signs back up his draft profile, which highlighted his athleticism, speed and composure.
Most important player
Peter Wright and Kyle Langford kick the goals. Jordan Ridley and Mason Redman marshal the defence. But sometimes it feels like Zach Merrett does everything else. Essendon’s captain is the “pivot” in the team’s ultra-uncontested style. His running power makes him constantly available to receive the ball and either start a handball chain or spot up a teammate with his exquisite kicking. His form and fitness will go a long way to determining what kind of season the Bombers have.
Biggest question to answer
In my first draft of this piece, I asked if Essendon’s forward line can function better. But I quickly realised the biggest question is actually whether the Bombers can become the pressure team Brad Scott wants them to be. Pressure is footy’s magic elixir: it makes things easier for your defence because it reduces the quality of opposition disposals, and makes it easier to score because you can turn it over closer to goal. Scott publicly declared that improving Essendon’s pressure was his number one priority. Last season, it sort of worked – until it spectacularly didn’t. Bombers fans will hope that the performance against Geelong (17 tackles inside 50) is a sign that 2024 will be different.
What success looks like
It’s possible for a team to get better but not finish higher on the ladder. Genuine improvement can be wiped out by bad luck and a tough draw. And there’s a decent chance that’s exactly what happens to the Bombers in 2024. But I think the average Essendon fan would accept a regression in their underlying numbers if it meant winning a final. Yes, I know it’s the thing everyone says. But they say it because it’s true.
In a nutshell
Essendon are trying to do one of the hardest things in footy: going from being OK to being very good. On paper, they’ve added experience, size, and pressure. It’s progress or purgatory.
Agree? Think I’m a fool who’s biased against the Bombers? Share your thoughts in the comments.