Ethan Blackadder and Dalton Papali'i are being rested after tackling themselves to a standstill in Dublin, but Codie Taylor, TJ Perenara and Sevu Reece are casualties of their own failings.
Taylor, after starting the season in world class form with the Crusaders, battled to be anywhere near his abrasive best through the Rugby Championship and looked spent in Dublin.
It was his weak tackle that flanker Caelan Doris ran through to score Ireland's third try and it was a moment that signalled Taylor was out on his feet, that his slow demise had reached the terminus and his season was over.
Perenara failed to bring the speed and accuracy the All Blacks need in their number nine and his decision-making was laboured and on one occasion – when he tapped a penalty under his own posts - inexplicably miscalculated.
Reece, another who was tracking superbly earlier in the year, lost his attention to detail in Dublin and played without the composure and awareness that makes him so deadly.
A squad that has seen Foster maintain a compassionate front throughout 2021 – a year like no other – has discovered that there is a hard edge to him. Mr Nice does indeed have the capacity to be Mr Nasty.
Some of what happened against Ireland could be blamed on too much time away from home, but not all of it, and the challenge for Foster was to pick a team this week that reflected his understanding of where that balance sat.
Be they rested, dropped or otherwise, no one has survived who shouldn't and the outcome feels about right, something not always easy to achieve in New Zealand where a single loss can be treated as more significant than it is and the pressure to respond with dramatic action intensifies.
It's not untypical when the All Blacks play poorly that the New Zealand rugby public and media turn into Tricoteuse – the blood-thirsty knitters of the French revolution, who in the shadow of the guillotine, would thread the names of those being publicly executed into whatever they were making.
Foster has given the baying masses a few heads in the basket to cheer but not so many as to undermine the sense that he still knows the core of his best team.
But selection alone can't be considered a panacea. It is a good start: getting the right players on the park is at least half the battle in this journey towards redemption.
Another part is lifting the mental energy – persuading a bruised and battered group who have been away from home for almost three months to dig into the deepest parts of themselves and eke out whatever they have left.
It's not so much the fresh legs of Dane Coles, Sam Cane and Aaron Smith that will rejuvenate the team, but their desire and eagerness.
They come with a hunger and intensity that Foster is hoping will infect others and that the likes of Akira Ioane, Quinn Tupaea and George Bridge will sense they have been handed a golden opportunity to finish the year by making definitive statements about their respective abilities to be big, time international players.
The final piece the All Blacks must get right in their quest for redemption in Paris, is their strategic approach to playing a French team who present a unique threat – albeit one that is underpinned by the common themes of a bruising pack of forwards and a well-organised aggressive defence.
What's not clear yet is whether the All Blacks got their strategy wrong in Dublin or their execution.
In the three toughest tests the All Blacks have faced this year – South Africa twice and Ireland – they have produced unusually high error counts and uncertainty as to what is cause and what is effect.
Are the mistakes a symptom of a predictable attacking strategy that is making it too easy for aggressive defensives to force basic errors, or has consistent poor execution of the basics prevented the All Blacks from building the platform they need to showcase the full array of their weaponry?
The benefit of the doubt sits with the latter, as the All Blacks have produced plenty of smart, slick attacking rugby this year.
In the first half of the second test against South Africa they scored three tries, which were built on the relatively simple business of getting over the gainline early, stringing together a few phases and creating just a fraction of space to exploit.
Foster has made bold and decisive selection changes, but they won't count for much if they don't come with bold, decisive and accurate execution on the field.
