After a horror first quarter the Crows scrapped to an 11-point lead midway through the final term, thanks in part to the inaccuracy of the Blues, but Craig pointed to a lack of poise under pressure as the basis for the six-point defeat.
While not excusing his players for the side's third loss in succession, Craig saw the performance as a step in the right direction.
"It's a difficult loss for us, but this group of players is still learning to play hardened AFL footy," Craig said.
"It's the most exciting group I think this club has ever had. I can just see this group of players doing great things. I really mean that, but it will take some time.
"Their attitude to wanting to play big time footy is as good as I've seen for a young group. They have a very clear vision of where they want to go and they're an absolute joy to coach.
"It's not a throwaway line because we've had some outstanding personnel in our footy club over the journey. I really enjoy this group. They're going to do some really good things.
"It will be a good experience for them to play against a quality side in a quick game of footy and to hang in there. We're a fair way away at the moment, but if we keep doing that we'll accelerate pretty quickly."
Craig has attracted criticism for a perceived inability to change up his game plan in the face of stiff opposition, but he did just that after the Crows fell behind by 27 points in the first quarter.
He laughed when asked if the fight back for the rest of the match was evidence of a 'Plan B'.
"Clearly we were able to protect the corridor better. If you call that 'Plan B' then yeah that's 'Plan B' - we protected the corridor better," he said,
"Carlton uses the corridor and they're very aggressive at doing that particularly by foot more so than hand. Whilst I recognise the effort of our team Carlton still had 11 more scoring shots, so we need to keep it in perspective."
The effort Adelaide displayed for the last three quarters of the match was in stark contrast to last weekend's second half against its cross-town rivals.
"Our supporters will want to know [why], but that's sometimes what you get when you have a very young side," Craig said.
"That's not a cop out because we don't expect to see that with any side that we put on the park. That was very much a sub-standard two quarters of footy - sub-AFL standard in terms of the basic ingredient of competition. Whilst I'm prepared to give some leniency to our younger side we won't cop that.
"We deserved all the criticism and I deserved all the criticism that I've received as senior coach. We're not backing away from that.
"It's not good enough, but what you saw tonight - you don't get that sort of response from a group of players who haven't got any mental capacity and fibre about them."
