It’s tough to get over a night like the Packer football team had last Friday when it lost 63-26 loss to Faribault, but playing a winless Mankato East this Friday on the road could be a start.

Austin (0-3 overall, 0-2 Big Nine) is hoping to get over the hump and snap its current 22-game losing skid. Last season, the Packers looked to be driving for the winning score against East, but the Cougars picked off a pass and ran it back for a TD to end the game.

This time around, Austin head coach Brett Vesel said the Packers have had a quality week of practice and some changes have been made.

“The kids still want to improve and they want to win. We think we can compete and we want to win just as bad as anybody,” Vesel said. “We haven’t been doing good on the offensive line, so we’ve made some personnel changes. We’ll see how that goes.”

When the Packers watched the tape of the Faribault game, it was clear for them to see that mental mistakes got the best of them.

“That’s probably the worst game I’ve been involved with in my life. We had some miscommunication that led to easy touchdowns,” Vesel said. “There were times where we didn’t run the coverage that was called and we’ve fixed that part of it.”

Vesel said the Cougars (0-3 overall, 0-2 Big Nine) run about as much as they pass, which is quite a bit for a high school team. The Packers have struggled containing their opponent’s passing attacks this year and they’ve also recorded just one sack in the three games.

“We’ve gotta get some pressure and we can’t let them sit back and throw,” Vesel said.

The Cougars played Faribault two weeks ago and lost 40-9 to the Falcons.