On 5 October 2015, Worsfold was appointed as the senior coach of the Essendon Football Club. He signed a three-year contract. His first season at the club proved to be a difficult one, with twelve senior players, including then-captain Jobe Watson and vice-captain Dyson Heppell, receiving suspensions for the 2016 season, as a consequence of Essendon's 2013 doping scandal. Due to this, the club finished on the bottom of the ladder for the first time since 1933, and Worsfold claimed his second wooden spoon as a coach. However, he would take the Bombers back to the finals in 2017, where they suffered a 65-point elimination final defeat at the hands of the Sydney Swans at the Sydney Cricket Ground.