It wasn't quite as bad as the performance against Italy in 2009 when then assistant coach Steve Hansen suggested after that everyone should "flush the dunny and move on", but it wasn't far off.
There certainly was no sense that the All Blacks will be proud of what they achieved. They didn't find the tempo or control they were after and the only things the All Blacks could get right were their scrummaging and lineout work, particularly the way they set-up their driving maul off the latter.
They were impressive in those two areas: seriously strong and intimidating and four of their tries came from lineout drives.
And they needed to have some kind of trump card to play, some means to get themselves into the game and ahead of an Italian side that brought an intensity of passion that they were able to make go a long way.
Italy may have been terrible for an age, but they brought enough linespeed on their defence and tactical acumen in their contestable kicking to reduce the All Blacks to a jittery rabble.
It looked awfully like new Italian coach Kieran Crowley had spent hours picking apart what the Springboks had done so well against the All Blacks this year and adopted two bits he felt his side could emulate.
The Italians, presumably aware of their limitations, built everything on how quickly they could get off the defensive line and how well they could compete in the air.
The worrying thing for the All Blacks, is that the Italians were able to get so much out of so little.
No one in black wanted to take command of the ball when it was in the air and a lot was spilled.
What should be particularly worrying was that the Italians were quite obviously under tactical orders to kick high when they had possession in or close to the All Blacks 22 – something the Springboks did and were criticised for despite it being a tactic that worked.
The impression appears to be growing, almost becoming accepted as fact, that the All Blacks can't deal with the high ball and its worth, in lieu of having any better ideas, just thumping it into the sky and seeing what happens.
So too is it now becoming taken as read that the All Blacks have no means yet to build the continuity game that makes them so deadly when the defence pushes up from the outside and is prepared to sacrifice accuracy for speed.
The All Blacks seemed powerless to find a way to adjust their alignment and foot speed to buy them the fraction of time and space they needed to produce the accuracy required to play through the rush.
The handling of the midfield was erratic, their timing not quite right and their connections broke and too much ball was dropped or thrown wildly.
It was impossible to reach any other conclusion that the All Blacks were gripped by panic. The mistakes compounded the more they tried to pass and catch their way out of trouble and they lost their shape and their cool and the more they played behind the gainline.
It was an ugly business for much of the game watching them tie themselves up in knots and fail to find answers to the same old questions.
The positive at least was that the All Blacks found the commitment, passion and perseverance they needed to compensate to some extent for their lack of accuracy.
