In a back-and-forth affair, Syracuse prevailed on the final play in a thrilling overtime victory over No. 25 UNLV.

Here are the top takeaways from Friday in Las Vegas.

There’s no way to sugar coat it.

The special teams, which had been bad this season, fared extremely poorly against UNLV.

In the span of six minutes of the second quarter, Yasin Willis had a seven-yard kickoff return, the punt return unit gave up a 23-yard return, and Jack Stonehouse opted not to have his kick blocked to instead go for a 13-yard dropped. -yard loss to give the Rebels a short field.

Even after the offense drove for a short field goal just before halftime to seemingly settle matters, the next kickoff sailed out of bounds to give UNLV choice field position.

The rest didn’t help.

The Rebels blocked a punt in the third quarter with the ball flying, then bounced back more than 40 yards into the end zone for a room service score. Willis allowed the ensuing kick-off to bounce twice in the field of play before collecting it and eventually taking it to the box.

In fairness, Jayden Oh had a flawless game as the new placekicker, even though his workload was five extra points and a 21-yard field goal.

McCord completed his first 11 passes for 141 yards before having to dump the ball to avoid a sack on his next attempt.

That set the tone for a streaky night for the quarterback, who was 29 of 52 for 214 yards (a poor 4.12 yards per attempt) after that blistering start.

One thing McCord did very well, aside from one bad interception, was passing on third downs. Starting with the field goal drive late in the second quarter, McCord was 8 of 12 on third downs and earned seven first downs, including two touchdowns.

The offense’s inability to get a consistent push in the run game is troubling.

Neither personnel nor formation seem to make much difference. Multiple heavy packages with a tight end still don’t generate running room, and in four-wide alignments running lanes don’t appear often.

There was some promise shown against the Rebels with power run calls to Willis, so that might be a slightly more frequent tactic, although it also carries the risk of being a new personnel deployment that could give away the intent of the attack.

Also, Willis’ stat line of eight carries for 62 yards looks good, but he had 47 yards on two rushes and 15 on the other six.

The defense needs impact plays to offset their tackling issues.

Duce Chestnut’s interception and Fadil Diggs’ pair of sacks were joined by two other tackles for loss in the game.

Through five games, SU has five turnovers, all interceptions and one forced fumble by Marlowe Wax.

As a team, they have 11 sacks, four of which came from Diggs and four of the others came in the fourth quarter of Holy Cross’ blowout.

They need Wax to be an impact player once he returns to the lineup.

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