SOUTH PARIS – If it hadn’t been an obvious case of too little, too late, conspiracy theorists might have thought Oxford Hills was desperately trying to quell a blazing Edward Little offense when a couple of sprinklers started spraying the north end zone early in the fourth quarter.

The Red Eddies crossed the goal line on all six of their first-half possessions and cruised to an impressive 53-21 win over the Vikings in Friday night’s Pine Tree Conference opener at Gouin Complex.

EL racked up 327 of its 465 total yards for the game in the first half. Merton “Buddy” Foss rushed for three touchdowns and turned a broken pass play into a 58-yard score. Cody Goddard completed eight of 13 passes for 197 yards and three touchdowns. Dylon Therrien opened the Eddies’ barrage with a 56-yard interception return for a touchdown on the game’s first series, then chipped in with 85 yards and a TD on the ground.

“We’re balanced and we know that,” EL coach Darren Hartley. “We have to get better up front, and obviously, we have to get better defensively, and we have to do it quickly because I’m sure (next week’s opponent) Mt. Blue will be very, very good.”

They will have to be to combat EL’s explosiveness. The first time they had the ball, Goddard and company needed just three plays to take the lead for good on a 54-yard touchdown pass to Lewiston transfer Dominique Bailey (three catches, 78 yards) down the right sideline.

“I was looking on the out to (Sean) Daigle, but he was covered so I had to go deep, and he was wide open,” Goddard said.

A pair of one-yard scores by Foss kept the Eddies rolling. Meanwhile, the Vikings, running a new spread offense under first-year head coach Nate Danforth, kept pace for most of the first half, thanks to QB Jake Hall’s arm and legs (94 yards each passing and rushing in the first half).

Hall gave them their only lead when he shook off Therrien’s interception with a five-yard TD run on their next possession. Hall added an eight-yard scoring run and a 17-yard TD pass to Nate Dubois, to keep the Vikings as close as 26-21 midway through the second quarter.

“EL is a big-play team, so we knew that was going to happen and we talked all week about responding,” Danforth said. “I was very happy with my kids. The first half was a great half. The big plays at the end kind of took the wind out of our sails.”

The Eddies pulled away with several big plays in the final four-plus minutes of the first half. Foss rumbled to a 42-yard TD to make it 32-21. Another Eddies’ interception led to a score when Goddard, about to be sacked, threw a shovel pass to his safety valve, Foss, who followed some great blocking down the left sideline for 58 yards to paydirt to make it 40-21.

“Right as I was going down, I see Buddy with his hands open, so I just flipped it out to him. He’s got speed, so he made it happen,” said Goddard, who came up a bit gimpy after the play.

“The line did a really good job of sticking their blocks, and I just ran hard and kept my shoulder low,” Foss said.

The defense forced another turnover on Oxford Hills’ next series. Hall tried to intentionally ground the ball as he was being sacked for a big loss by Devin Flynn, but since he threw the ball backwards, it was ruled a fumble, which Jon Ford recovered at the OH-20 with 6.4 seconds left. With time for just one play, Goddard lobbed a pass to the left corner of the end zone that Shane Cirello hauled in to make it 46-21.

Lest anyone conclude after that first half that the Eddies are strictly a bombs-away squad, they started the second half by grinding out a 63-yard TD drive capped by Therrien’s three-yard run. They ate up seven minutes on the clock with 11 of the 12 plays on the drive coming on the ground.

“We haven’t been very good in the second half since I got here, and I was literally praying on the sideline for a score to begin the third quarter,” Hartley said. “We were very happy about that drive.”

Hartley was also happy with the defensive adjustments by coordinator Travis Dube, which limited the Vikings to just 37 yards and denied them a single first down in the second half.