Paris had hit the roadblock called North Shelby the past few years.

The Coyotes lost 58-8 at the top-ranked 8-man football team on Friday to lose their sixth time in six career meetings against the Raiders. Paris (3-1) was ahead of North Shelby (5-0) in the Class 1 District 8 standings going into the game and was undefeated heading into it like last year.

North Shelby has been the No. 1 ranked team the past three weeks while Paris rose to No. 10 in the rankings last week. Despite Paris scoring at least 50 points in its first three games and coming off a bye week, North Shelby jumped ahead 20-0 halfway through the first quarter.

“We kind of pulled the same thing as every other team that’s played them,” head coach Cody Carney said. “We just had some turnovers early. They got the ball first and scored. We had a fumble that they recovered on a bad pitch, and then we ended up throwing a pick six.”

Carney said good teams capitalize off mistakes, and that is what North Shelby has done. That has factored into the Raiders eliminating Paris the last two years in districts.

The fumble wasn’t necessarily a bad pitch, Carney added, but his players were too close to each other. He said the interception was a good play made by first team all-state athlete Gannon Bowen.

“We started the game with some safe plays just trying to see what they were doing, but their kids just made some really good plays,” Carney said. “The interception, we thought it was a pretty good safe play, but the Bowen kid read it really well, was able to undercut it and made an impressive run.”

Carney said there is a lot of familiarity with North Shelby and studied last year’s film to try and find answers. However, he said it was obvious that they also studied last year’s film.

Paris tried to keep the ball out of North Shelby’s hands, Carney said, but the early mistakes forced them to take more chances on fourth downs and abandon that game plan.

“It’s just little things like seeing if there is a little pass here and a little run here that we can take advantage of that their kids leave open,” Carney said.

From playing a “brute force” team like North Shelby with big offensive linemen and running backs, Carney said Paris will prepare for a different offensive team Knox County (3-1). The Eagles are currently third just behind Paris in the district standings and defeated the Coyotes 32-20 last year.

“They’re not as big, but they’ve got a lot of speed,” Carney said. “Knox likes to run the ball, too, but they do it in a different way, trying to use their speed on the outside. They run a little more option and try to make you guess wrong and try to get a big one on you.”