Skipper Petero Civoniceva admitted after Penrith's third-straight loss on Saturday night, an 18-10 defeat to Melbourne, that an honest chat among the players this week will be crucial to his team getting its season back on track.
Three weeks ago the Panthers were flying high on top of the NRL ladder after they beat the previous pace-setters, the Dragons, but successive losses to the Warriors, Eels and now Storm mean they could slip to third if Wests Tigers, up against the Sea Eagles in Gosford, win on Sunday.
Penrith led 10-6 with just over 15 minutes remaining before late tries to Justin O'Neill and Matt Duffie in an error-riddled game allowed Melbourne to charge home to victory, and Civoniceva insists he and his team-mates need to turn things around quickly.
"I think we're not going anywhere as a team if there's not that acceptance about (the fact) that we're contributing to these losses," Civoniceva said.
"I think we just have to be honest as a group and make some decisions on where we want to take the season."
"We've definitely got the players there and there was plenty of toughness out there tonight but just poor execution let us down."
"We've got some work to do this week and as I said there's got to be some acceptance amongst the group about how we're contributing to these losses and until we do that well then we can get our season back on track again but there's only so much the coaching staff can do."
"The playing group, I think we're guilty of as Matt (Elliott) said, some real crucial errors at early stages of sets that are just bringing us undone.
Coach Matt Elliott was most frustrated by poor decision-making in the final 20 minutes of the game after his team had overcome its failure to capitalise on early dominance of field position and possession to hit the lead.
"Their execution was back from where we'd like it to be but our decision-making (was poor), we made nine errors in the second half, and I think we made four of them when we were in front on early plays," Elliott lamented.
"If you're chasing the game (and) someone offloads in the yardage set you understand that but not when you're in front against a tough opposition like Melbourne."
"This week our lack of respect for possession at crucial times, against a high-quality opposition cost us for sure."
Hoping to regain Luke Lewis next week along with late withdrawal Luke Walsh, Elliott will work hard to help his players make smarter decisions in the heat of battle.
"My job is to make sure that we do the easy stuff first and eliminating poor decisions I reckon is pretty easy and requires no effort," he added.
"So if we can eliminate those the rest of the stuff will become a little easier."
"Certainly we've got to get some players back into our team though."