Carlton coach Brett Ratten says the Blues need to take a lesson from last year's AFL grand finalists Geelong and St Kilda about how to deal with adversity.

Ratten was embarrassed by what he said was a substandard workrate against Essendon on Saturday night, as the Blues went down 13.17 (95) to 10.15 (75) at the MCG, their sixth straight loss to the Bombers.

He said no Carlton player beat their opponent and it appeared that every Blue was waiting for a teammate to spark them, rather than lifting themselves.

Ratten contrasted that to the attitude Geelong showed in comeback wins in the opening two rounds, or the Saints' ability to pull away from Collingwood on Friday night despite injuries to stars Nick Riewoldt and Sam Fisher.

"You watch Geelong in the last few weeks, when you think they're in trouble, they look across and (Joel) Selwood and (Jimmy) Bartel really take it to the next level," Ratten said.

"Our group can really look at some of the teams in the competition, you look at St Kilda (on Friday night), there's lessons for us in the past few weeks of the AFL season.

"Our players could look at other teams and admire what they do when the chips are down and you're not getting dealt the cards that you want.

"You actually have to do something about it and they did that, the opposition that we've seen in the last few weeks have done that, I didn't think our boys did that at all."

Ratten said it was disappointing because the intensity had been there in the previous round's narrow loss to Brisbane.

"The comparison between the Brisbane game and this game were miles apart and we can't deliver that," he said.

"You can not expect to win games of football (with that effort) and to pull something out of the bag at the end of the game was a big ask.

"We still had opportunities, I think we kicked the ball out on the full maybe nine times for the game, which was staggering, but I just thought our workrate was below par and that's what I was embarrassed about."

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