Carlton's forgettable afternoon at AAMI Stadium became worse with news that the versatile Jarrad Waite will miss a number of weeks with a knee injury.
Waite hobbled off the field late in the first quarter after hyper-extending his knee while trying to intercept a kick in the Crows' attack.
He took no further part in the game which was a big blow for the Blues, according to coach Brett Ratten.
"He'll get scans tomorrow and we'll have to find out from there but I'd dare say he'll be out for at least one or two weeks," Ratten said.
"He's a bit of an X-factor for our team; he can play pretty much anywhere. (It's hard) to throw tricks at Neil (Craig) across the bow, throwing players around when you lose sort of the bloke who is most flexible in your team."
"But all in all it just comes to winning the ball and they won a lot of one-on-one contests."
Heath Scotland struggled to recover from his big collision during Carlton's clash against Collingwood in Round 8 and was a late omission from the selected side. But he's expected to play Brisbane next week.
Ratten said the veteran was left out for precautionary reasons.
"We don't need to push him out, cop another whack and then we are set behind the eight ball for the following week as well. We thought a safe approach and we did that with Wiggins the week before," he said.
Ratten added pride 'was the big injury of the day' after his side failed to score a goal in the first half against Adelaide and then eventually lost by 44 points.
He said the team's positioning across the ground played a part in their barren start to the game.
"I thought we were second to the ball and we probably rolled down a little bit too much to influence or assist our backs but that's probably because we were chasing so much and were second to the ball," he said.
"They did it really well, they were up and running early, we knew they were a good starting team and they got off to a flier."
"Even knowing the third quarter can be a let-down quarter they had a fair bit of leeway to play with."
Meanwhile Ratten said he was not overly surprised with his team's inconsistency and added there were high expectations on the Blues to be the big improvers in 2009.
"There is some hype and there