Ex-Kerry manager Éamonn Fitzmaurice believes that Dublin could become much harder to beat again if they sort out their present kick-out woes.
Dessie Farrell's side head for Omagh this weekend, having lost four from four, Kildare recently condemning them to their first loss - excluding pre-season - against Leinster opposition since Meath's five-goal blitz in 2010. Relegation to Division 2, once considered a fanciful notion, now appears a distinct likelihood.
Fitzmaurice, who managed Kerry from 2012 to 2018, presiding over the 2014 All-Ireland success and tangling with the Dubs on several occasions, asserted that one of the most difficult elements of playing Dublin during their Gavin-era pomp was the problem of building momentum against them.
According to Fitzmaurice, almost invariably when one hit the Dubs for a score, they succeeded in killing momentum by successfully maintaining possession on their next kickout - Kerry's quick two-goal salvo before half-time in the 2016 All-Ireland semi-final notable as an exception.
Speaking on the RTÉ GAA podcast, Fitzmaurice said this knack has recently disappeared from their game, while still contending that Stephen Cluxton's heir as Dublin keeper, Evan Comerford, was well capable of mastering the kick-out component of the game.
"It's about getting back to basics," Fitzmaurice said.
"Go back to the Kildare game. In that game - and it was a great win for Kildare in Newbridge and everything else - Dublin had three, if not four, very good goal chances. If they'd taken two of them, it's probably a different conversation we're having about them today. Are they back? Are they going to be able to back it up with another win?
"I think they got their defensive structure a bit more right against Kildare. They weren't as open and as porous as they were in Croke Park against kicking teams. Healy Park won't play as fast as Croke Park at the weekend, that might help them.
"The decision making of their big players, not kicking it into the goalkeeper's hands, putting it dead, not turning the ball over in the forwards, they're all things that are quite easy to solve really.
"They're the things that have been surprising about their performances, things that we've never seen from them, they've been doing them consistently. If they get all of those things out of the system, they're going to be harder to beat straight away.
"The other thing that I think that has put them under severe pressure over the last couple of weeks is their own kickout.
"For so long that was such a huge part of their game. They could go long, they could go short, if the team dropped off them, they gave it short and so on.
"The big thing always when you were playing the Dubs was that it was so hard to build momentum against them.
"Because when you got a score - be it a goal or a point - they almost always got their kickout away.
"And the way you're going to build momentum against them is to build a couple of scores in a row. And that's becoming easier now.
"That's something that could have been fixed in the last couple of weeks. If you go back to basics, get the movement right, get Evan Comerford nailing the kickouts - as we know he can.
"If they fix those couple of things, suddenly they become a lot harder to play against again."
Recently retired Dublin corner back Philly McMahon spoke of the importance of "leaders" emerging from the next wave of Dublin talent and Fitzmaurice pinpoints the current leadership "void" as another factor in their current struggles.
"When you were playing them in championship, part of the reason they were so hard to beat was that you could tie down five or six of them - but someone else would always emerge," Fitzmaurice said.
"And it wasn't the same fella every day. Connolly would do it one day, Kilkenny would do it the next day, Paul Flynn would do it the next day, the likes of Mannion might do it another day.
"There was always one or two, when the need was greatest, stood up. Because they were all leaders. And probably at the moment, with the younger players trying to bed in, they're not comfortable yet in their own playing roles, never mind in a leadership role, as in telling Brian Fenton 'cop on, will you give me the ball properly?' They're probably not in that space yet.
"I think that's where the leadership void is at the moment. But it's a huge opportunity for those lads, and not even the very new lads, but the likes of Bugler, the likes of Lahiff, the likes of Sean McMahon, the likes of Robbie McDaid.
"There's a cohort of players there who are very new but there's also a cohort who have been there, who have All-Ireland medals, and maybe it's time for them to start stepping up."
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