Finally rolling: Has Carlton's season been kickstarted?

It's not often a team gets six games into an AFL season and it's still hard to have at least some sense of how good or not they are. But that's sort of how it feels with Carlton right now.

At 2-4, the Blues are still up against it, but their situation is at least far from irretrievable after two big wins over West Coast and North Melbourne. On Sunday looms a far greater challenge, however, in what could be a season-defining clash against the formidable Geelong.

And then follows a testing month in which Carlton takes on a series of opponents -- Adelaide, St Kilda, Sydney, and GWS -- all of whom have at least two wins from their past three encounters with the Blues - and whom inflicted some psychological scarring on Carlton in the process.

That's the weird thing about the Blues these days as a score of frustrated fans will testify. They'll surprise you when you least expect it. And disappoint you just when things seem to be rolling their way.

So how do we assess their season to date? Much of that subjective rating depends on one's assessment of the rest of the competition.

Blowing a 40-points-plus lead against a likely wooden spooner in Richmond seems superficially about as bad as the opening to a new season gets. Except perhaps for the fact that "likely" bottom team is in fact now equal 13^th on points having just last week knocked off the AFL's only remaining unbeaten team.

Then came a trifecta of what cynics would scoff at but which really were "honourable losses", Carlton no less than competitive against first Hawthorn, then Western Bulldogs and finally Collingwood, the margins of defeat only 20, 8 and 17 points. In each case, it was the Blues who had the better of the early going, but in the end were simply unable to exert enough scoreboard pressure to clinch the deal.

That left Carlton 0-4 and an obvious target for 101 "hot takes" and headlines suggestive of crisis. But while the scoreline was obviously superficially concerning, if you can actually grade winless starts to a new football year, this might have been one of the less disastrous.

And viewed from that perspective, it makes those demolitions of the Eagles and Roos in successive weeks less of a dramatic turnaround than scorelines of 17.19 (121) and 24.9 (153), and winning margins of 71 and 82 points would indicate.

It actually hasn't taken a heap to make Carlton a lot better over the past fortnight, and enough evidence to suggest that the statistical drivers of that improvement are at their foundation as much about restored confidence levels.

Certainly, Carlton's execution both inside the forward 50 and further afield has been vastly superior in the wins over West Coast and North Melbourne to the sloppy ball use which prevailed in the previous losses, even when the effort was commendable.

The midfield has looked deeper, George Hewett in outstanding form along with Adam Cerra, and zippier, too, an oft-missing ingredient, the likes of Jesse Motlop spending considerable time as part of the centre square rotations.

Even without Harry McKay, the forward set-up has looked an entirely more dangerous proposition, Charlie Curnow now with some decent game time under his belt and seven goals in the last two games the upshot.

But just as significant has been the improvement up forward at ground level, small forward Corey Durdin with half-a-dozen goals against the Eagles and Roos, and newcomer Will White with a total of four.

More opportunities of better quality has been the result of quicker, cleaner delivery, and that's off the back of some dramatically improved grunt, Carlton's contested ball ranking having climbed from sixth to first over the past two rounds, and its clearance differential ranking jumping from ninth to third.

In a way, the start to this season has mirrored the Blues of 2023, in that back then, while the losses continued to mount, Carlton as low as 15^th on the ladder after 15 rounds, many of the key statistical indicators, particularly of the defensive variety, remained solid.