A 21-0 deficit isn’t what Salisbury head coach Andy Cerco had in mind when his team hosted Palmerton on Friday night. Many teams would have rolled over facing such a large early deficit, but his Falcons quickly righted the ship.

Those 21 points, however, proved to be just a little too much to overcome. Salisbury (4-5) rallied to tie the game at 42-42 in the fourth quarter, but the Blue Bombers (6-3) closed the game with two touchdowns to secure the 56-42 win on Friday night.

“Together they understand that it’s a long game,” Cerco said. “The things that occurred, they are behind us…We have to play the play in front of us, keep our heads high and keep playing football. That’s something we’ve been working on as a program for a long time.”

Following that rough first-quarter stretch that saw Palmerton quarterback Tekoah Guedes throw two touchdowns and the Blue Bombers score another after a high Falcon snap on a punt attempt, Salisbury seemed to settle in.

Starting in just his third game at quarterback, junior Jacob Kamp hit Oliver Stewart for a 43-yard touchdown to get the Falcons on the scoreboard. Salisbury struck not even two minutes later on a 1-yard touchdown plunge from Lucas Irwin.

Palmerton scored on the first play of the second quarter, but a touchdown run late in the half by Irwin got the Falcons within 34-28 at the break.

After the Blue Bombers scored again on their first possession of the second half, the Falcons inched even closer. Kamp capped an 11-play drive with a 4-yard touchdown, making it a one-touchdown game yet again. Almost three minutes later, the scoreboard read 42-42 after Kamp connected with Timmy Buda for a 56-yard catch-and-run touchdown.

“We also had 11 penalties, which we need to clean up,” Cerco said. “It’s a combination of different things throughout the course of the game that really turns things from a win to a loss, or a loss to a win.”

The defense forced the Blue Bomber offense into two punts on its next two drives, but the Falcon offense could not take advantage. A three-and-out and another high snap on a fourth down punt gave the ball back to Palmerton, which scored two plays later on Guedes’s 7-yard touchdown run. Another Falcon three-and-out gave the Blue Bombers an opportunity to ice the game in the final minutes, and they did with Guedes’s sixth touchdown of the game.

Kamp finished with over 200 yards of total offense and four touchdowns to lead the Falcons.

“I think each week he’s becoming more comfortable as a quarterback,” Cerco said. “He really does a great job in terms of preparation. When you put that kind of effort into preparing for a game on Friday night, and it’s time to step up and throw the ball as much as he did and make those decisions, he is ready to do so.”