A combination of injuries, senior players failing to fire and a significant drop in contested football has contributed to the Swans' winless start this season, which reaches crunch time against West Coast in Perth on Thursday.
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Sydney must beat the Eagles or slump to a 0-4 record, from which no team in the AFL era has ever recovered to make the finals, and coach John Longmire has been forced into even more changes this round.
Ruckman Sam Naismith has failed to overcome a knee injury suffered at training, meaning Callum Sinclair will handle the bulk of rucking duties against the Eagles.
Small forward Tom Papley has been named to play his first game of the season, while Harry Cunningham returns for the omitted Jordan Dawson.
Last weekend's team which lost by a point to Collingwood featured nine players boasting 15 games or less of experience, and the Swans have already used five debutants this season.
Longmire's ex-Kangaroos teammate David King said the forced reliance on youth was having a major flow-on effect to the team's playing style.
"They're not the same team that we saw last year, they're not as tough around the action," King said.
"Their contested numbers are really horrible – for a team that likes to drag the opposition into the trenches they're pretty poor at the moment. Their pressure numbers are probably down a fraction.
"Basically the foundations of what's traditionally been the Swans' brand of playing finals footy for 23 rounds before the finals isn't evident at the moment.
"They've had a few of their stars down, no doubt about that, [Dan] Hannebery, [Luke] Parker, to a lesser extent Kieren Jack have been down on previous years.
"That was the youngest Swans line-up since 2006 last weekend. It doesn't mean those guys didn't play well. A high percentage of them did what you expected, but when your leaders are slightly off and when you're relying on that next level of talent to get the job done for you, inevitably you fall short."
North Melbourne was the last team to make the finals after losing their first three games of the year, achieving the feat in 2007.
The Swans also managed it in 1999, as part of the golden stretch of finals football the club has enjoyed over the past two decades where they've finished in the playoffs 18 times in the past 21 years.
Former Sydney coach Paul Roos said the club's shocking run of fortunes with injuries was to blame for their slow start, and expected things to turn around when their experienced players started to filter back in.
"The kids have got talent – but because they're younger, they come out of the system where they're going to school and playing school footy and TAC Cup footy so it's a fairly different environment when you're playing AFL and it's very different when you've got to play nine kids with a combined total of 45 games," Roos said.
"It's tough because a lot of the times they're not physically ready to play. You're relying a little bit on their talent and that's probably what you're seeing with the Swans at the moment.
"The young guys are going pretty well, there's a lot of responsibility on the senior players. They played well last week but they're probably just at the moment getting beaten on pure talent."
Roos said the competition had tightened up this season and expected 12 wins might be enough to make the final eight.
"If there's a team that can do it, you can see the Swans getting on a roll, you can see the Swans rolling eight to 10 wins in a row," Roos said.
"There's so many shocks [this year]. The Suns beating the Hawks, Carlton beating Essendon, Collingwood beating the Swans.
"Twelve wins might get you in this year with a good percentage. That's a big thing for the Swans and teams that are losing games – the Swans' percentage is still pretty strong."
