Adelaide coach Neil Craig compared his team to a 'rag doll' after it was comprehensively thrashed by second-placed West Coast at Subiaco Oval on Saturday.

The Crows were outplayed in all areas of the park and trailed from start to finish, before losing 26.9 (165) to 12.11 (83) - a devastating margin of 82 points.

A fantastic Mark Ricciuto goal from the boundary line pulled the Crows to within 28 points at the start of the third quarter, but the Eagles turned on the afterburners soon after, outscoring the Crows 9.2 to 4.0 in the third term to officially kill the game off.

Craig conceded his side was just well beaten.

"They were too good for us all over the ground and we can talk about individual spots or playing positions or style of play (but) we got treated like a rag doll," he said. "They just picked us up, shook us and threw us against the fence."

"We were never able to put two or three goals together. We'd get one and maybe you could sort of see a bit of a spark and then (the Eagles) would go and kick an easy goal, so, probably in reality and the way it felt - and I'm sure the players felt it out there as well - it was just an avalanche."

"We were never really able to assert ourselves against them all day, which is disappointing for us and unusual for us."

Craig said it was a match his team could learn a lot from in order to jump to the next level.

"A day like this, in a lot of ways, can be a fantastic gift for us - to expose us once again to know where we're at - and we've played a hardened football club today, a hard club that has been under a degree of adversity if you like, so that's the level we need to be at (in order) to achieve (our goals)," he said.

"This is a really good lesson…it just goes to show how far we've got to go to be put in the same category as a West Coast or a Sydney. If you can't learn from that there would be something wrong with you."

"In all areas of the game we couldn't get ascendancy anywhere. I thought our guys kept at it, they didn't give up at any stage but we were just totally outplayed."

Craig was in no mood to make up excuses either.

"We could pull back to travel, we could pull back to the ground, we could pull back to whether we've done any extra work, we could pull back to 'it's a loss you have to have' but they're called excuses and they're very easy to hide behind," he added.