Ratten said his on-ball brigade, and his team overall, should be rated on their season's efforts and not just one match – despite him labelling Saturday's performance against Adelaide as embarrassing.
The Crows humbled the Blues by 72 points at Etihad Stadium at the weekend, booting the season's highest score of 27.14 (176) in the process.
During that match former Richmond coach and now commentator Terry Wallace singled out a few Carlton players for criticism.
Commentating during Saturday's Adelaide-Carlton clash, Wallace suggested the likes of Nick Stevens, Heath Scotland, Marc Murphy and Judd weren't working hard enough defensively.
Ratten said Wallace's opinion was his "and he can have it", but the Blues coach said he had been a little harsh in his assessment.
"I'll defend the offensive side of our game [but] on the weekend we conceded 170-odd points which is quite embarrassing, but before that we've really improved defensively as a team," Ratten said.
"There might have been moments in the game on the weekend which were not great for us but I think our season has showed we can defend a lot better than we did on the weekend.
"Terry might have made an observation that was part of last week's game, but I don't think you can put that down to a season performance."
Judd, sitting alongside his coach, also seemed unperturbed by Wallace's comments.
"There's over a thousand accredited journos, all with a thousand different opinions, so you can't sit and defend yourself against all of them," he said.
"I think offensively on the weekend our midfield was pretty ordinary and defensively we were pretty ordinary and that resulted in a 72-point loss."
Judd is gearing up for his first finals campaign since 2007, when he played with West Coast despite being injured.
Now fit, he is looking forward to leading his team to its first finals series in eight years.
"I guess exciting is the word you keep coming back to," Judd said when asked how he was feeling ahead of Saturday night's elimination final against the Brisbane Lions.
"You know there's only eight teams that are still playing footy, the weather's starting to get warmer … the finals is a whole new season starting."
Judd, a premiership player and Norm Smith medallist, said it was important some of his less-experienced teammates treated their preparation for the match like any other.
"No Carlton player's had the opportunity to play finals for about eight years now, so it is a tremendous privilege," he said.
"[I'll tell them] not to build the game up any more than it already will be. All the players will be excited and nervous, and to accept that that's going to happen but [to] still just go out there and enjoy the challenge."
As for any extra expectation on him personally, the Blues champ was eager to deflect the attention despite being lured to Visy Park to guide the club towards its next premiership.
"I think everyone in the competition has the same amount of pressure on them, it's just the pressures are completely different," he said.
"I've got pressure on myself to perform this week but so do the other 21 blokes and that pressure will be for varying reasons."
