By ROBERT ROMERO

For the Daily News

TARBORO — The Tarboro Vikings showed Washington Pam Pack why they’re the defending state champions tonight, shutting out the Pam Pack 48-0 for their second straight 40+ point win to start the season.

The Pam Pack (1-1) was riding high from its dominating 46-6 win against the East Carteret Mariners last week and went into enemy territory versus Tarboro (2-0) with the same game plan that worked to perfection last week centered on the running game.

Washington received the opening kick and Ka’ci Foreman ran the ball 46 yards on the first play, helping set up a first down on Tarboro’s 12-yard line. However, the Pam Pack turned the ball over on downs after four straight rushing attempts that came up short from reaching the end zone. This turned out being the theme of the game for Washington’s offense, as Tarboro’s defense shut down everything the Pam Pack was running and throwing at them, forcing four total turnovers for the night.

“We believe that running the football is our strength and we thought we could get some options going tonight, but Tarboro proved that we couldn’t do that against them,” Pam Pack head coach Jon Blank said. “They (Tarboro) were more physical than us and they rallied to the ball. We put together some good runs but they didn’t let us put together a string of good runs.”

While the Pam Pack’s offense were struggling to advance the ball, the Vikings took a page out of Washington’s offensive playbook and manhandled their defensive line on the ground. Viking running backs Jyron Albritton, Ty’trez Higgs and Keon Caudle combined for 375 rushing yards on 38 carries to go along with four touchdowns.

More impressively for the Viking’s trio was how they were able to physically dominate Washington’s defense. It took at least two to three Pam Pack defenders to take down just one of the three running backs every play, and Tarboro’s offensive line played a huge factor for creating space for them on big plays. According to Blank, that’s exactly what hurt his team.

“I spent the first half watching our defensive line get pushed back and watch our linebackers get driven back into the secondary,” Blank said. “Then I saw our kids miss a whole lot of tackles. You can’t arm tackle against a team that’s as strong as Tarboro and that’s what we tried to do tonight.”

Washington will look to bounce back next Friday when it hosts D.H. Conley at 7 p.m.