Brad Arthur gave Parramatta players an extra day off to stew on their humiliating loss to Manly this week while doing some soul searching for answers he may never find.
A 56-10 loss to the Sea Eagles on Saturday night exacerbated an already horror run of form for the Eels, who have dropped from second on the ladder in round 10 to sixth with just four wins from their past 11 games.
The past fortnight in particular has been their worst in defence since 1995 after conceding 96 points against the Sea Eagles and South Sydney (40-12).
Predictably, the rapid decline of one of the premiership hopefuls over the past month has sparked speculation of in-fighting within the group in their Queensland base.
Desperate to turn around a four-game losing streak against North Queensland on Saturday night, Arthur said he can no longer over examine what has gone wrong in camp but instead is focusing on what they can do right.
"It might be 10 different people with different opinions on what's going wrong," he said on Friday.
"I could sit here for the next three months trying to work out if we've done too much, or have we not done enough?
"Do all the players get along, do they not get along? Are we in the bubble or are we not?
"I'm never going to get to the bottom of that.
"What I do know is we're not playing well enough.
"Every team has to go through the same situation that we're in.
"We've tried to make improvements along the way with what we're doing and there's been some adjustments this week to see if we can't get a change of response."
Grappling for answers, the coach gave players an extra day off on Tuesday.
It was to have a two-fold effect; to let them think longer about the loss to Manly and also to ease the mental fatigue that can dog a team under siege.
"Sometimes it's easier for them to get over it if I address it straight away but I let them get away from the footy a bit and have a think about it themselves," he said.
"We came back in on the Wednesday and we were honest with our appraisal of the game and what we need to work on moving forward."
A sharp turn around is needed to ease pressure on Arthur's job, too, with games against Melbourne and Penrith to come before finals.
"It needs to be individual accountability starting with me and then working our way through the playing roster," Arthur said.
"Sometimes the more you look at it, it can have a detrimental effect.
"We've focused on, when we're winning, what does it look like, what do we do really good and we need to get back to that.
"We know when we're losing what it looks and feels like, and we don't want to feel that."
