Kyle McCord threw for 453 yards and five touchdowns to break Deshaun Watson's ACC season passing record and lead No. 21 Syracuse to a 52-35 victory over depleted-yet-scrappy Washington State in the DirecTV Holiday Bowl on Friday night.
LeQuint Allen rushed for 120 yards and two touchdowns for his second straight 1,000-yard season for the Orange (10-3), who had their first 10-win season since 2018. Fran Brown joined Paul Pasqualoni (1991) as the only Syracuse coaches since World War II to win 10 games in their first season.
McCord, the national passing leader, came in with 4,326 yards, which was fifth on the ACC's season list, and needed 268 yards to break Watson's record of 4,593, which he set in 15 games in 2016 at Clemson. McCord broke the record by a yard on the Orange's first play of the second half on a 50-yard pass to Darrell Gill Jr., who made a beautiful over-the-shoulder catch. McCord finished with 4,779 yards.
"Just to be sitting here and have that record now is crazy to see how everything comes full circle," said McCord, who transferred from Ohio State.
"He's not selfish at all," Brown said. "He cares about everyone else. He's very, very competitive."
The coach said the Orange saw McCord's competitiveness from the first day of workouts.
"We were in the weight room; we had an old vintage weight room. They had pushups that they were doing, and he was one of the last guys to go down. Everybody stopped and he just kept going, and from that moment I knew, like, 'Oh, this dude's tough.' And everyone else knew that he was tough. He just kept showing that he's tough and relentless," Brown said.
McCord was 24-of-34 and threw for 218 yards and three touchdowns in the first half. Gill had 145 yards on four catches, and Jackson Meeks had five catches for 110 yards. Trebor Pena and Oronde Gadsden each had two touchdown catches.
The Cougars (8-5) lost their fourth straight game but were spirited despite losing coach Jake Dickert to Wake Forest, quarterback John Mateer to Oklahoma, both coordinators and the quarterbacks and running backs coach, as well as having more than 20 players enter the transfer portal.
Zevi Eckhaus, who threw only seven passes in the regular season as Mateer's backup, threw for 363 yards and three touchdowns with two interceptions. Kyle Williams had 10 catches for 172 yards to break Dez Bryant's Holiday Bowl record of 168 receiving yards in 2008.
Washington State took a 21-14 lead with two touchdowns in just more than a minute late in the first quarter. Williams caught a short pass and turned it into a 66-yard touchdown. On the ensuing Syracuse possession, Leon Neal Jr. blocked a punt and Josh Meredith returned it 12 yards for a score.
Syracuse scored three times in the second quarter for a 35-21 advantage. McCord threw scoring passes of 18 and 5 yards to Gadsden sandwiched around a 2-yard touchdown run by Allen.
McCord rewrote the Orange's record book this season, extending his school single-season records to 4,779 passing yards, 34 touchdown passes, 391 completions and 592 attempts.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.