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Vikings drop first game of season to Falcons

Sep 30, 2016 | 10:48 PM

All along, Vikings head coach Mike Humenny knew the last half of the season was going to be significantly more difficult than the first half.

When his team began 2016 with three straight wins, he reiterated that point.

On Thursday afternoon, it became clear why, as the second half of the Vikings season officially began with a 30-7 loss to the Marian Graham Falcons in Saskatoon.

“At the end of the day, we just didn’t play as physical as we needed to, especially in the first half,” Vikings head coach Mike Humenny said in a phone interview on Thursday. “We just weren’t on today physically, as well as mentally at times, and it really showed. Marion Graham really took advantage of that.”

The team watched a lot of game film throughout the week leading up to the matchup, taking note of the Falcons strong aerial game, particularly because of wideouts Alexander Dewar and Connor Sparks.

Because of that, the Vikings defence focused on limiting the Falcons passing game, only to find the home side adjusted well.

“We attempted to take those [receivers] out of the game with our schemes but to do that we kind of made ourselves more susceptible to the run,” Humenny said. “As they ran the ball better as the game went on, we had to make some adjustments to stop the run, which allowed them to have their big play receivers make some big plays against.”

So in a way, it was a catch-22: when the Vikings tried to stop the pass game, the Falcons ran efficiently, and when the Vikings adjusted to stop the run, the Falcons went back to their bread and butter.

“We thought that our front-seven – our defensive line and linebackers – would be able to play a little bit better run defence,” Humenny said. “We were actually surprised with the way Marion Graham ran the ball today.”

On the offensive side of things, Humenny said the Vikings run game is where the most improvement needs to be made.

Starting tailback J.T. Lamb is out with a wrist injury at the moment so they’ve been going with a run by committee approach at the position.

“Our ability to run the ball is going to be the key to our success,” Humenny said. “We did not run the ball that well today. I don’t know what the stat line was but our run game was almost non existent.”

The team is being patient with Lamb because he is only in grade 10 and has a bright future ahead of him. Lamb injured his wrist at a U-16 provincial team at a tournament in Regina earlier this year.

“We don’t want to rush things whatsoever but we’re very anxiously awaiting his return because when he’s in the line up we’re much more dynamic in what we can do,” Humenny said.

Next up for the Vikings is a home date with the Bishop J. Mahoney Saints on Friday, Oct. 7 at 6:30 p.m.

Following that is the final regular season game of the year against Evan Hardy.

 

 

Nathan Kanter is battlefordsNOW’s sports reporter and voice of the Battlefords North Stars. He can be reached at Nathan.kanter@jpbg.ca or tweet him @NathanKanter11