A disappointed Don Pyke was in no mood to make excuses – not injury, not a shorter pre-season, not anything – after watching his side fritter away a 20-point lead to lose to Essendon.

Pyke's Crows were without Charlie Cameron and Jake Lever, who have joined rival clubs, as well as Brad Crouch, Tom Lynch, Taylor Walker, Riley Knight and Andy Otten from their Grand Final side. 

Throw in Brodie Smith (knee), Sam Gibson (hamstring) and Alex Keath (ankle) and this was a seriously new-look Adelaide, but none of that mattered to Pyke – and he had a point.

The Crows introduced three debutants, Darcy Fogarty, Lachie Murphy and Tom Doedee, plus ex-Blue Bryce Gibbs, but still managed to burst to a 20-point three-quarter time lead.

But an inspired Bombers line-up ran Adelaide ragged in the final term, kicking six goals to one to post a 14.15 (99) to 12.15 (87) triumph in the teams' season opener at Etihad Stadium.

"We were in a good position at three-quarter time and, look, the numbers don't really lie," Pyke told reporters.

"We conceded 20 inside 50s in the last quarter, which put a lot of pressure on our backline and we were still winning a chunk of ball at times.

"But it's fair to say Essendon, on the night, at the end, outworked us.

"We bring in three new players and a few guys who didn't play a lot of footy for us last year, but that said, we were 20 points up at three-quarter time, so they clearly understood the roles they needed to play and we couldn't get it done."

Essendon's landslide advantage in inside 50s in the fourth quarter (20-8) was not the only ugly number for Pyke, with half of his team failing to record a tackle in that period.

"That's disappointing and certainly not the way we want to play our footy," he said. 

"We did a couple of things to try and stop (the Bombers' momentum), but the reality is when you win the ball, you've got to be able to retain it and I think time in possession we were way down.

"Certainly time in forward half, it was nearly 30 to 70, so there's a component where we needed to actually just own the ball for a period and we couldn't do that." 

Pyke said he didn't see the incident that saw Richard Douglas reported for a bump on Essendon star Zach Merrett, who took no further part after quarter-time.

But the performance of Gibbs, Fogarty, Doedee and Murphy heartened the coach somewhat ahead of next week's Grand Final rematch with Richmond.

Walker, Lynch and Gibson, whose streak of 130 games ended when he was a late out for Hugh Greenwood, are all a chance to play against the Tigers, according to Pyke.

"All those guys are a possibility," he said.

"They'll have a session – not so much Sam – but Taylor and Tom will have a session tomorrow, and we're hopeful they'll be ready to go on Thursday." 

Curtly Hampton (groin) was the Crows' only fresh injury concern out of Friday night's game.