Although the Austin Packer football team showed some good signs in a season opening 48-34 loss to Rochester Mayo last week, Austin senior lineman Logan Hotek is far from satisfied.

He’s hoping for a much better effort when the Packers (0-1 overall, 0-1 Big Nine) this week.

“It was all effort [on defense against Mayo]. Individually it was embarassing for me and I know for some of the other guys it was embarrassing,” Hotek said. “It will never happen again.”

The Tigers (0-1 overall, 0-1 Big Nine) lost their first game of the season last week to No. 4 ranked Mankato West by a score of 74-14. AL is playing under first year head coach Kevin Armbrust.

Against, West, the team pounded the ball on the ground and Jake Kilby was their top rusher with 80 yards and a TD on 18 carries.

Austin head coach Brett Vesel said the Packers are still trying to figure out exactly where they stand as a team.

“I think every game right now is going to tell us where we are at,” Vesel said. “We’re not quite as good as Mayo right now and now we’re going to find out where we stack up against Albert Lea. We don’t know how good Albert Lea is, because we know Mankato West is always pretty good. There’s no records to really compare it to.”

Austin’s offense rolled in the first half against the Spartans, but the Packers struggled to get first downs in the second half as the rain and mud built up. Hotek said the offensive line can play even better than it did last week.

“We did create some big holes [last week], but there were some things that we needed to fix,” he said. “It was all mental stuff and that’s what we’ve been working on the last couple of days.”

Austin racked up more than 200 yards on the ground against Mayo, but it had just 61 yards passing. Vesel is hoping the team can have much more balance this week.

“We want to be more balanced and we weren’t very balanced every week,” he said. “We don’t want to go out there running every down or passing every down.”