It is true, they did acknowledge something needed to be done, but all they ended up doing was reconfirming that they're right, and the Protestants are wrong, and excommunicating them. If they'd listened to the Hussites and other pre-Reformation reformers and did things like allow priests to marry women, condemn indulgences, reform the monasteries/nunneries, etc etc, perhaps that would have helped.
Except they did reform. They keep on reforming and trying to reform.
They condemned the abuses of indulgences, but could not afford to condemn the idea behind it which is the whole point of sacraments and the Church, of works and faith being in tandem. The abuses were caused by people gaming the system, as it were.
Allowing priests to marry, well, they did. They restricted it precisely because it led to priestly dynasties. And the dueling clerical dynasties are already bad enough when they were illegal, as you can see with the Papal States of the Renaissance, where again, the people were gaming the system.
As for reforming the monasteries, yeah, well. The battle for the reform of religious orders has gone on since Saint Benedict, on to Saint Francis, and then to Saint Ignatius of Loyola. The secular princes do enough with dissolving the richest of them.