Geelong's recent habit of losing to teams they were expected to beat is just the latest twist in a season that continues to confound the natural order of things in football.
The Cats have played seven games against sides in the bottom-half of the ladder and barely managed to break even, winning four and losing three.
This apparent loss of focus should be of some concern to coach Chris Scott. But he can take some comfort from the fact that the Cats also know how to switch on when they need to.
Geelong have played seven games against top-eight rivals and won six of them, knocking over Hawthorn, West Coast, Adelaide, Greater Western Sydney, North Melbourne and the Western Bulldogs. And their one loss, to GWS first-time round, was by only 13 points on the Giants' own patch.
If you were to frame a ladder based on the top-eight's results against each other, Geelong would be two games clear on top.
On an alternate ladder based on games against so-called also-rans, the Cats, you guessed it, would be on the bottom.
Scott's men appear to require a challenge of sufficient magnitude to raise the bar. That is at least some comfort given that immediately after this weekend's bye, the Cats will take on Sydney, Adelaide and the Bulldogs in the space of four weeks.
But does that in turn make them more vulnerable when they finish off the home-and-away rounds against Essendon, Richmond, Brisbane and Melbourne?
You'd hope an approaching finals campaign and the importance of preserving a top-four spot would offer the Cats a fair bit more opportunity for focus than equivalent games in May and June. But in this crazy season, who really knows?
Geelong certainly have more cause for confidence than do West Coast, the Bulldogs and probably even North Melbourne, despite the fact that the Roos not all that long ago were two games clear on top of the ladder.
The Eagles, Dogs and Roos have been very consistent in their ability to dispose of opponents they must. Unfortunately, their propensity to fall short against top-order rivals is also becoming a recurring theme.
Those three teams have won a combined 23 games against sides outside the eight and not a lost a single one. And the top eight? Just four wins and 13 losses.
Three of those four victories were close shaves, too, the Bulldogs beating Adelaide and West Coast (both at home) by just 15 and eight points respectively. The Dogs' four losses to top-eight opponents have included a nail-biter (against Hawthorn) and a belting (against Geelong) and a couple in between.
No one comes close to West Coast, for consistently putting lesser opponents away and succumbing to those of supposed similar stature.
The Eagles are 0-5 against the top eight. And they have been comprehensive defeats, apart from the loss to the Dogs by no less than five goals, hence a percentage against those quality opponents of just 66.7.
West Coast get annoyed by the "flat-track bully" charge, but those numbers make it an allegation pretty hard to defend.
Who most consistently gets the job done, whatever the circumstances? On that score, it's pretty hard to go past Sydney, the Swans having won four of their six games against the top-eight and six of seven against the rest – the one defeat after the siren to Richmond.
Hawthorn and Adelaide, meanwhile, have imperiously dismissed their bottom-half opponents, but only managed an even split of wins and losses in their top eight assignments. That said, the Crows haven't been far off the pace in the heavyweight clashes, three of those four losses by 10, three and 15 points.
So as we settle in for a good two months of jockeying for spots in the top eight, who would you rather be?
As Scott noted on Saturday after the latest upset at the hands of St Kilda: "It's better to beat the top teams than the ones that might not be there in September."
But he didn't need to add that unless you can beat the ones that will not be there in September, you just might not be in a position to prove you can beat the best, either.
