ADELAIDE coach Brenton Sanderson isn't going back to the drawing board after suffering his first defeat as Crows coach, but he admitted Sunday's 56-point thrashing by Hawthorn has given him plenty of food for thought.

After defeating Gold Coast and the Western Bulldogs, both winless after round three, to start the season Adelaide had no answer to the Hawks' high-possession running game in the second half at the MCG.

The Crows were smashed in several key statistical areas, but Sanderson was measured in his response to the performance.

"We certainly took a little step back today without question," Sanderson said.

"We weren't coming over just to compete - I said all week that we were coming over to win - so from that point it's disappointing, but we'll review the tape, work on some [areas] for improvement throughout the week and I'm sure we'll come out of it a better side.

"We played a good side today and at times we looked pretty good ... but on reflection it was a pretty disappointing final result.

"We had too many guys who were down - that's the simple message."

While Sanderson was keen to push the line of a young team still finding its way under a new coach, he admitted some damning statistics didn't lie.

"They had [105] more disposals and took [89] more marks than us, which is pretty crazy and for a side that dominated possession ... to have [29] more tackles was probably the most disappointing thing from my point of view," he said.

"At least if they had the ball you'd think we would have won the tackle count, but they just slipped through us today. Their tackle intent was just ferocious, they really tackled us and put us under pressure, and we just couldn't get clean ball forward.

"Hawthorn's disposal efficiency was up around 80 per cent, which is a crazy number.

"We just didn't have enough pressure on the ball carrier."

Despite that poor delivery inside 50, the coach was pleased with the work of key forward Kurt Tippett, who finished with three goals but spurned another three gilt-edged scoring opportunities.

"He was disappointed," Sanderson said of his star's performance in front of goal.

"He missed some goals that we would have loved for him to kick, but it's something that he's working on pretty hard behind the scenes and I'm sure it's going to improve."

The views in this article are those of the author and not necessarily those of the AFL or its clubs