On their heels

Two days after Portland State suffered arguably its most disheartening loss of the season, head coach Jerry Glanville backslapped friends, chuckled and wore a smile that said nothing short of “look, I’m upbeat.” Since his days as an outspoken NFL head coach, Glanville has been known to take losses especially hard. Often times his glum facial expressions will show the wear and tear of a difficult defeat.

Monday was much different.

Instead of harping on his team’s many shortfalls and wishing woes away, Glanville spoke mainly about the positives he witnessed in the Vikings’ 37-17 loss to Northern Arizona.

And when he did touch on the negatives, mental slipups were primarily to blame. “We just made too many mental errors,” Glanville said of his team’s performance on Saturday, which dropped the Vikings to 2-4 overall and 1-2 in Big Sky play.

The one error Glanville held above all others was the Vikings’ inability to stymie the vicious Northern Arizona pass rush.

Already leading the nation in sacks heading into the game, the Lumberjacks added 10 more to their total, fully disrupting the Portland State passing game in the process.

Glanville said that the problems caused by the Northern Arizona pass rush could have had a simple solution if adjustments would have been made on the field.

“I don’t blame any individual. I blame all of us; we all made mistakes,” Glanville said.

While the Vikings still threw for 369 yards, starting quarterback Drew Hubel was forced into a few costly mistakes early and junior Tygue Howland entered in relief to toss Portland State’s only passing touchdown on the day.

This came exactly one week after Hubel and Portland State offense put on a passing clinic, accumulating over 600 yards through the air and scoring five passing touchdowns versus Eastern Washington.

“We allowed them to blitz us without retaliating,” Glanville said. “We should have been able to pick it up [the blitz] and throw the ball.”

The Lumberjacks’ blitz-heavy packages caused Howland to be dropped in the backfield seven times after replacing Hubel midway through the second quarter. Before Saturday, the Vikings had only allowed 15 sacks in four games.

Glanville said that Hubel and Howland were handcuffed by the fact that errors were being committed around them, leading to a less-than-stellar passing performance.

“We didn’t give them a chance,” Glanville said of the quarterbacks, who went 24 for 54 passing and averaged 15.4 yards per completion. “The bottom line is we didn’t adjust to what they were doing,”Despite the trouble picking up the Lumberjacks’ blitz, and the defense’s inability to stop a Northern Arizona passing game that averaged 17.6 yards per completion without an interception, Glanville was proud of the effort.

After a loss like the one the Vikings’ suffered, Glanville said it is important to “find the good.”

With a slight chuckle, Glanville said that he had to “take his hat off to his team,” because of the fact that the Vikings never quit even in the face of a 20-0 second-quarter deficit when little was looking bright.

One of the areas Glanville was especially proud of is how well his defense played near the goal line. There were three occasions, including two inside the 10-yard line, where the Vikings held Northern Arizona to a field goal.

“Inside the 10, we were awesome,” Glanville said. “All we were giving up is field goals.” The fact that the Lumberjacks were four of 14 on third-down conversions was another bright spot in Glanville’s mind, however, the Vikings were even worse, converting only four of 16 third-down attempts.

Kickoff coverage was the final aspect that generated another grin from Glanville in spite of the Vikings’ loss Saturday. He was especially thrilled that Portland State only gave up 14 kick return yards even though the kickoff team has eight freshmen.

“I don’t want one senior on there,” Glanville said of the kickoff team. “I would buy a ticket to watch the kickoff coverage team. That’s worth the price of admission.”