Brisbane coach Anthony Griffin has torn strips off his side for the defensive effort in their last-minute loss to North Queensland at Suncorp Stadium on Friday night.
In an error-riddled yet highly-entertaining battle, the Broncos failed to aim up in defence, conceding 28 points only a week after holding Paramatta scoreless in the opening round.
The rot started in the fifth minute, when Dallas Johnson scored the first of five Cowboys tries, strolling in untouched on a one-out decoy play.
Post-match, a taciturn Griffin spared nothing in his negative assessment of the loss, accusing his players of failing to turn up.
"We were very poor defensively tonight," he said.
"It was just the story of the night: We let in soft points, bad decisions and a lack of effort."
"We just weren't prepared to really work for it tonight. If it didn't hurt too much we were happy to win the football game."
"We showed some real ill-discipline to be giving away penalties and our general attitude towards defence and trying to shut the game down was poor."
"We all let ourselves down tonight."
The fact that Brisbane orchestrated four tries of their own and won the second half was of no consolation to their coach, who claimed a positive result would have made no difference to his disappointment in the performance.
"We did nothing to win. (If we'd won) we had (a loss) coming next week or the week after. It would have just masked a poor performance tonight if we'd hung on to win," said Griffin.
Rookie captain Sam Thaiday cut a dejected figure post-game, ruing an inconsistency across the 80 minutes that left his side vulnerable to Matt Bowen's 79th-minute game-winning try.
"It was good to see us get back on top; we started that second half really well, but our foot went off the accelerator and we just let them back in the game," he said.
"We'd get on top, we'd let them back in. It showed right at the end. We were on top, we let them back in and then Mango (Bowen) scores that try and breaks our hearts."
"If I knew the answer I would have said it out there and we would have won the game."