Steven Furtado bobbled the snap on the punt, hesitated then took off. Raekwon Kisilywicz chased a bouncing ball, scooped it and sprinted to daylight. Later, Kisilywicz burst through a hole and went untouched to the end zone.

With every stride, Furtado and Kisilywicz set the Cranston West football team up to turn Friday’s game and its season around. And the Falcons delivered.

Furtado’s botched punt touchdown, plus Kisilywicz’s punt return that set up a score and his kickoff return touchdown, helped the Falcons erase a 7-0 deficit on Friday night in South Kingstown. And once they had the lead, the Falcons ran with it, scoring 21 consecutive points in the second half and cruising to a 40-21 victory in a game they probably had to win to have any chance at a playoff berth.

The Falcons came to South Kingstown mired in an 0-3 start to Division I play. Thanks to the special teams spark and the second-half finish, they left as a team with a new lease on life.

“These guys stick with it,” said West head coach Steve Stoehr. “They just needed to finish. We talked about that all week. We’ve been in every game but we didn’t finish. They needed to finish tonight and they did.”

The Falcons improved to 1-3 in Division I and are part of a logjam below Hendricken, La Salle and Portsmouth, who lead the division. Cumberland is 2-2, followed by three teams that are 1-2 and then West.

A loss Friday would have pushed the Falcons way off the pace, but they didn’t let it happen. Just like last year, when a win over South Kingstown stopped an 0-4 start to league play, West found a way to stop a streak against the Rebels again.

It didn’t get off to a promising start, as South Kingstown marched 67 yards for a touchdown on its first possession. The Falcons punted on their first drive, and though they recovered a Rebels fumble, they lined up to punt again after going nowhere on their second series.

That’s when special teams took over, even if the first step was an accident. Furtado, West’s quarterback, dropped back to punt near midfield on the final play of the first quarter. He dropped the snap, picked it up, hesitated and then ran into wide open space on the left side. The Rebels caught up to him around the 30-yard line, but he side-stepped a defender and rambled into the end zone. Matt Malo’s extra point tied the game.

“Second week in a row he dropped a snap,” Stoehr said. “He’s not going to be able to do that every time but he made a good play out of it.”

The West defense responded to the momentum shift with a quick three-and-out. On the Rebels’ punt, Kisilywicz let the ball bounce. It trickled past him, but he picked it up, spun and then got loose, racing 48 yards. Anthony Shepard made a touchdown-saving tackle at the 2-yard line. On the next play, Alex Martinez barreled into the end zone to put West in front 13-7.

The Rebels answered with another 67-yard touchdown drive, capped by a Rafael Pires 7-yard score. Tristan Kozul’s extra point put the Rebels in front.

But one more time, West had a special teams stunner up its sleeve. Kisilywicz caught the ensuing kickoff at the 7-yard line, saw a hole in the middle, raced through it, bounced the play to the right and cruised untouched into the end zone. West couldn’t convert the two-point try but led 19-14.

“Special teams kept us in the game,” Stoehr said. “If it wasn’t for special teams, we might have been down big. And then our offense kind of kicked into gear a little bit.”

It took until the second half for that to happen, as the teams each punted twice before the break. But when the Falcons did get going, they hit a high gear.

They opened with the ball in the second half and marched 70 yards in 10 plays for one of their most impressive sustained drives of the season. Furtado converted a third-and-11 with a slant pass to Anthony Lopez Veras then finished the drive with a 2-yard touchdown plunge. Furtado hit Abdiel Mendez in the flat for the two-point conversion, making it 27-14.

The Rebels answered with a drive to West’s 20-yard line, but the Falcons stopped quarterback Brendan Blessing a yard short on a fourth-and-3 scramble.

Taking over at its own 18, West gave the ball to Mendez for his first carry of the game, and he broke a 55-yard run. West didn’t take advantage, turning the ball over on downs at the 19, but field position and time were tilting in its favor. South Kingstown took over with just 41 seconds left in the third quarter. After the West defense hit Shepard for a loss and forced two incompletions, the Rebels tried faking a punt on fourth-and-11. Pires dragged defenders to pick up 10 yards but couldn’t get the first down.

Three plays later, West pulled away. Kisilywicz scored from 13 yards out on a toss to the left, making it 33-14.

West then recovered a bouncing kickoff and needed just four plays to find the end zone again. Furtado threw a perfect fade to Nick Almonte for a 23-yard touchdown. Malo’s extra point made it 40-14.

“The last couple of weeks, we kind of got out of our gameplan in the second half,” Stoehr said. “Today, we stuck with it, and the kids handled. They played a nice game. They didn’t quit. They stuck with it. I’m proud of them.”

The Rebels got a touchdown run from Reymi Acevedo with 5:37 left but would get no closer as the Falcons coasted to the win.

Mendez led a balanced running attack with 80 yards on seven carries. Kisilywicz rushed for 55 yards on nine carries and racked up 135 yards in the return game. Furtado completed four of nine passes for 38 yards and a score, while rushing for 43 yards. Mazen Taman had 37 yards and Martinez had 30.

The Rebels had two 100-yard rushers, with Shepard tallying 139 yards on 20 carries, and Pires getting 104 on 18 carries.

West will now get a break from the Division I grind, with a non-league game against Division II Chariho on Friday at 7 p.m., at Cranston Stadium. After that, West will welcome No. 3 Barrington and No. 1 Hendricken to town in consecutive weeks.

“We got the monkey off our backs,” Stoehr said. “We go into a non-league game next week. We’ll try to tune things up and get things ready and then we get into our Barrington-Hendricken stretch. It’s not going to get easier.”