The Brisbane Lions will this week monitor the fitness of co-captains Jonathan Brown and Simon Black after both played sore for long periods in Saturday night's AFL defeat by Essendon.

If another loss to a side in the bottom half of the competition was not costly enough - following the slip to Melbourne in round 14 - the Lions had two of their stars come off worse in big bumps at Telstra Dome.

Black was nursing a sore shoulder after he was crunched by Essendon ruckman David Hille in the first quarter, while Brown played under duress for most of the night because of a sore groin and hip, which he corked in a pack, although he still booted five goals.

The Lions will be desperate to have their two guns available for Saturday night's game against West Coast, now raised in importance following the past two losses.

Brisbane must beat the lowly Eagles to retain hope of finishing in the top four and could find themselves outside the eight after round 16 if they incur another defeat.

After the 24.11 (155) to 18.10 (118) result, coach Leigh Matthews said he had to focus on getting his players to improve instead of worrying about the double chance.

"You've got to try to win some games and if you win enough games you'll play top four," he said.

"But it's not really the issue. The issue is to get a bit more out of more of our players next week." In further concerns, ruckman Matthew Leuenberger suffered a minor knee injury, while defender Josh Drummond was also nursing a sore hip.

In a high-scoring game, the Lions defence struggled at times, and conceded several goals through bad errors.

Joel Patfull tried baulking Scott Lucas early on but was caught holding the ball, in the second quarter Patfull and Daniel Merrett spoiled each other which allowed Lucas to boot another and, in the final term, Troy Selwood gifted Sam Lonergan a goal when he slung him to the ground and was penalised 50 metres.

Matthews said the Lions struggled defensively, but paid credit to Essendon for their efficiency in attack.

"Our defensive mechanisms we were disappointed with," he said.

"That's a whole gamut of things, the ability to stop the opposition's scoring was clearly poor although they (Essendon) did make the most of their chances, so that's good play to them I suppose.

"If you get a shot you can either take it or not take it, and they took just about all of them."

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