ADELAIDE defender Daniel Talia would have missed the rest of the finals series with an adductor injury if the Crows had have beaten the Sydney Swans last week.

The All Australian played out his side's semi-final loss to the Swans with the injury despite suffering the strain in the first term at the SCG.

But the Crows have said the best and fairest winner would have likely been ruled out for the last two weeks of the finals series to recover from the injury.

"'Tals' has got a grade two-to-three adductor strain, so if we were still playing he'd probably miss a couple of weeks," the Crows' high performance manager Brett Burton told the club's website.

"Given it's the offseason, he'll rest that over the next few weeks and be fine to join in with the normal offseason program.”

The Crows' backline would have been severely weakened had they progressed to this week's preliminary final meeting with Geelong, with Jake Lever suffering a "serious" ankle injury.

Burton confirmed Lever will be in a moon boot for the next four weeks and will not be able to run for six weeks as he recovers from the ligament damage.

Lever will be one of a number of senior Crows who may have a later start to their pre-seasons, with Tom Lynch (knee) and Josh Jenkins (ankle) both to undergo post-season surgery.

"Tom is going in for a little knee clean-up. He'll be (training) off-legs for a little while, and we imagine that will be a four-to-six week recovery period. He'll have a relatively normal pre-season,” Burton said.

"Josh's had a bit of an issue with his ankle. He'll have a clean-out of that as well and, again, we're hopeful that he'll have a normal pre-season program.”

Luke Brown and Kyle Cheney will enjoy a rest over the pre-season after managing groin soreness.

Adelaide's first-to-four year players will start pre-season training on November 21 before the full group assembles on December 5.