Successful clubs are able to turnaround their rebuilds relatively quickly (within a couple of years) because they have a strong core with depth during their successful times. Once that successful period is over, the younger members of that squad become the older core of the next successful period. So when these clubs drop down the ladder and bring in a wave of high draft pick talent, they are actually adding these new kids to an already existing core. Hawthorn, for instance, added Buddy, Roughead, Lewis, Birchall, Rioli to an existing young core of Hodge, Mitchell, Sewell, Bateman, Croad, Campbell Brown, etc. They've remained on top since with smart trades and FA deals.
Our attempt at "rebuilding" in 2005 was started from scratch with no young core (unlike the Hawks). We stuffed up the 2004-5 drafts completely aside from Lids, so the start got pushed back to the end of 2006 and we were still "rebuilding" by the start of Dimma's reign at the end of 2009. We were able to build a decent core with Cotch, Lids, Jack, Rance, Dusty and trading in Ivan, while we brought in some experience via other trades and FA. This moved us from a bottom side up to the upper-middle region of the ladder by 2013. However, we really needed a second wave of top early-draft talent and/or a Hawthorn-like smart trades/FA scenario to boost the quality of our list and depth to become a top 4 side. Without either scenario, we have stagnated over the past 3 years and as a result still rely on the same core we had 3 years ago.
With good runs in terms of injuries, we've been able to play all of our core and hence our best 22 most weeks over a H/A season which has covered enough over our depth and quality deficiencies to have us finishing between 5th-8th. However, the heat of finals and now injuries to our key core players have exposed our list deficiencies and over-reliance on our core players.
A mini-rebuild, where we drop down and pick up a second wave of high-end draft talent wouldn't be the worst thing to happen. It doesn't help though that we have already given up a 2016 second rounder thanks to the Yarran/Gold Coast trades.