Football: Packers hope to improve against Mankato East

Published 9:33 pm Wednesday, September 23, 2015

The Austin football team has had games where its defense has stepped up and games were their offense has stepped up this season. It’s hoping it can click on both sides of the ball when it plays at Mankato East 7 p.m. Friday.

The Packers (0-5 overall) are coming off their best offensive game of the season as they lost 77-41 to Owatonna last week. The Packers’ best defensive effort of the season came in a week three loss to Rochester Mayo, where they held the Spartans to 26 points.

Against the Huskies, the Packers were able to score with big plays in the first half and they sustained a couple of drives in the second half.

Email newsletter signup

“Offensive line wise, that was probably the best game we’ve had in two years,” Austin head coach Brett Vesel said of the Owatonna game. “Across the board, it was our best performance in a long time. Jakob [Crouch] is getting better at making his reads and receivers caught the ball extremely well. We really did a great job of blocking at the perimeter at the wide receiver position.”

The Cougars (3-2 overall) have only played one team that the Packers have played and that was against the top-ranked Scarlets, who beat East 35-10.

East’s wins have come against Rochester Century, New Prague and Faribault.

“They’ve got some players. I think they’re really close to last year and they gave us trouble and beat us last year,” Vesel said.

Austin’s defense is looking to bounce back from a game where it allowed Owatonna to score on 11 of its 12 possessions.

“After watching the film, it wasn’t really what Owatonna was doing as much as what we need to do better. We just need to get better at the basics and we’re getting back into doing the fundamentals,” Vesel said. “I know the defense is going to get better. They just exposed us at our week point. Maybe we didn’t rep it enough prior to that, and now we’re repping it.”