LYNNFIELD — It could have been a killer. Triton had just scored to get back in the game, and, on the ensuing kickoff, the Lynnfield football team made a mistake as the ball bounded into the end zone. Triton’s Dylan Watson pounced on it for another touchdown to creep to within 5 points in what had been a runaway.
No worries. The Pioneers went right to work from there, scoring three times in the fourth quarter to end up beating the Vikings going away, 46-21, in the season’s football opener for both teams, and on an evening that was awfully reminiscent of a late-October game.
Pioneer quarterback Austin Sutera was the star of this one, completing 19-of-22 passes for 361 yards and six touchdowns, three to Jack Ford, two to Bakari Mitchell and one to Blake Peters. Ford had six receptions for 119 yards, while Mitchell had five receptions for 111 yards. Spencer Riley added nine tackles and one sack on the defensive side.
Balmy weather gave way to an autumn-like nip in the air as running back D.J. Capachietti — who stood out on both sides of the ball — burst off-tackle for a 70-yard touchdown run on the second play of the game. After Triton consumed copious time on the clock as it marched downfield, Lynnfield finally got a fourth-down stop when the defense gang-tackled quarterback Kyle Odoy on the Pioneer 23. That enabled the Pioneers to put together an eight-play drive, with quarterback Austin Sutera hooking up with Mitchell for the final 11 yards.
“That was our goal tonight,” said Lynnfield coach Pat Lamusta. “We wanted to score every time we had the ball.”
It pretty much ended up that way. Lynnfield had to punt only once while it was still a game, and that was deep into the third quarter. The game took on a fairly familiar pattern: Triton would go on long drives but either stop itself or be stopped, and then the Pioneers would use their big-play capability to strike quickly and put the Vikings in a deeper hole.
The defense, under the direction of first-year coordinator Joe Ford of Lynn (longtime defensive guru John O’Brien retired after last season), figured out the Vikings as the game wore on, and gave up only two touchdowns.
“How about our defense?” Lamusta asked. “They made some pretty big plays.”
Odoy’s 2-yard run midway through the second quarter put Triton on the board at 12-7, but the Pioneer offense was relentless. Sutera, setting up at his own 48, hit Peters with a short slant, and Peters did the rest, darting in and out of would-be tacklers to find the end zone and it was 20-7. Triton kept the ball after that until a little over a minute left in the half, turning it over to Lynnfield after the Pioneers made a stop on a fourth-and-7 from their 15.
The Pioneers followed with a textbook minute drill, zipping down the field, with receiver Jack Ford getting a turn at wowing the COVID-protocol crowd (two spectators per home player/cheerleader) with one 46-yard acrobatic catch, and then snagging another one of Sutera’s passes, this one for 13 yards, with no time left on the clock. And the score stood 26-7 at the half.
With 1:03 left in the third quarter, Triton capped off a long drive — aided and abetted by a Lynnfield fumble on a punt — with Odoy’s 4-yard run. On the kickoff, the ball darted into the end zone, where Watson jumped on it, and next thing you knew, it was 26-21, with an entire quarter to go.
But Sutera found Ford again, this time on a 32-yard run that featured some nifty broken-field running by the receiver, and it was 32-21.
At this point, Joe Ford’s defense began to solve Odoy’s flat passes, stuffing them for short gainers or for losses. And Lynnfield went to town. Sutera and Mitchell hooked up for a beautiful 51-yard sideline pass, hitting the speedy receiver in full stride, and, with Kevin Connolly’s kick, the rout was on. For good measure, Sutera found Ford one more time to put the final exclamation point on an impressive season-opening win.
