The Crows held a 27-point lead in the second quarter of last Thursday's blockbuster at Adelaide Oval but ultimately lost by 36, blowing their chance to go as high as third on the ladder.
Adelaide's defeat sparked scathing criticism from triple premiership coach and AFL great Mick Malthouse, who said the Crows had too many "soft" players.
"You cannot hide that many soft players," Malthouse told the ABC.
"That's how many soft players they've got. This is not a matter of just hiding one or two and saying, 'Oh look, you know what? We get to finals, we leave them out'."
When it was put to him that there wasn't a flag-winning team there, Malthouse shook his head and said, "Premierships are won by tough sides".
Cumming was asked about the comments when he spoke to media on Monday.
"I mean it's never nice to be called too soft," Cumming said.
"But I assume that he's talking about we just need to win the contest - which you could argue that he is right.
"We need to be harder in those contests and win them, but I definitely don't think we're too soft to win anything."
Cumming agreed the loss, which came just days after a stirring victory over second-placed Sydney, had been a wake-up call ahead of the finals.
"We did speak about that as well. Actually, at three-quarter time we were pretty much in the exact same spot as that Sydney game," he said.
"And then, it might be cliche, but quite simply, in the last quarter against Sydney we won our contests and we were able to kick some very nice goals to finish off our work - and that's the reason why we won that game.
"And then to simply compare it to that last quarter on the weekend, and we just lost our contest, and you get what you deserve sometimes."
Cumming said the Crows needed to be better at the mental side of the game and ensure they didn't switch off for a few minutes here and there and let teams back in.
Adelaide were due to have their proper review of the game on Monday before moving on to preparing to face lowly Essendon at Marvel Stadium on Sunday.
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