Salisbury isn’t afraid to take chances.

Paris knew this going in but were hurt by 248 yards passing and four total touchdowns from quarterback Ryan Binder as part of 428 yards of total offense to lose 42-8 at home.

Conversely, the Coyotes couldn’t get much going offensively as they tallied 111 yards of total offense, led by 90 yards and four interceptions on 12-of-27 passing from quarterback Leo Bounds, 33 yards on three catches by Colton Kendrick and a nine-yard touchdown run by Drew Williams.

Head coach Joseph Utterback said he takes blame for not adequately preparing his team for “air raid” style of offense by Salisbury as the Coyotes allowed three touchdown passes of at least 20 yards from Binder. The Panthers play aggressively in every aspect of the game – including using onside kicks on every kickoff, refusing to punt and going for two points after every touchdown – so that can be too much.

“They brought a lot of pressure up front on defense,” Utterback said. “They’ve got some really good defensive linemen that we’ve known for a couple years coming up. We were trying to get to the outside, but they had an answer for just about everything we did.”

Utterback said he needs to make sure his quarterback and his offense is in the right position to succeed even when teams like Salisbury adjust. Williams ran his touchdown up the middle to give Paris points before going into halftime with a 24-8 deficit.

Going up the middle didn’t work so well the rest of the night, Utterback said, as Salisbury added on.

“Every time you’re playing aggressive football like that, it comes out in their mindset of trying to put points on the board,” Utterback said.

Utterback said it isn’t time to hit the “panic button” after a Week 3 loss but believes Paris (1-2, 0-1 L&C) has to focus for the sake of the supportive school and community and also for Friday’s game at Harrisburg, who won 34-8 at Marceline in Week 3, (2-1, 1-0 L&C).

“The desire is there,” Utterback said. “We’ve got to narrow our focus and make sure we’re all on the same path of how we get where we want to get. We want to do this for our community and our school.”

Cross country

Kinnaman, Chapman star for Paris at Linn Invitational

Mairyn Kinnaman continued to make Paris’ debut cross country season a memorable one on Saturday.

Kinnaman finished 14th in the girls race at the Linn Invitational with a time of 22:23.27. Landen Chapman snuck into the last spot of the top 25 on the boys side with a time of 19:43.32.

Kinnaman was 12 seconds ahead of North Callaway’s Pressley Schmauch and was less than two seconds behind Osage’s Katherine Wolf.

For the girls, Alexandra Tullius finished 29th with a time of 24:06.75, and David Elzea ran to a 54th-place finish on the boys side with a time of 20:58.86.