No. 14 Wake Forest is back from its bye with momentum and a numbers edge that is hard to ignore.
The Demon Deacons have won four straight and have turned their last three games into a runaway, outscoring opponents 136-24 in that stretch. They’ll try to keep that surge going Saturday afternoon in Winston-Salem, N.C., when Virginia comes in searching for answers of its own.
Wake Forest enters at 6-1 overall and 4-1 in the Atlantic Coast Conference. Virginia is 4-4 and 2-3 after another close loss last week, a 19-16 setback at home against Duke.
For Wake Forest, the concern isn’t whether the bye week helped. It’s whether it interrupted a groove.
"The bye week is great to get refreshed, but man, we were in a rhythm on offense, defense and special teams, playing at a really high level," Wake Forest coach Jake Dickert said Monday.
He also made clear that the Deacons can’t assume that rhythm will just come back on command.
"The practice field is where you regain that. I talked a lot about that this morning.
It's got to be high intensity. It's got to be physical.
You can't just show up after a two-week gap and expect game speed. You've got to practice that way, think that way, operate that way."
Wake Forest’s offense has been one of the ACC’s most productive units. The Deacons rank third in scoring at 37.4 points per game, fourth in passing at 290.3 yards per game and fifth in total offense at 445.9.
Quarterback Gio Lopez was sharp in the most recent outing, throwing for 267 yards and four touchdowns while adding 51 rushing yards in a 41-7 win at Cal on Oct. 17. He ranks third in the conference with 278.1 passing yards per game and has thrown just one interception in 207 pass attempts.
There’s also a chance Wake Forest gets a key target back. Carlos Hernandez missed the Cal game with an undisclosed injury, but he still sits third in the ACC with 720 receiving yards on 49 catches.
The Deacons also know what Virginia looked like a year ago. Wake Forest escaped with a 16-9 win over then-No. 14 Virginia in Charlottesville last season.
"I have a lot of respect for who we're playing, because the style is very different and they're more than happy to grind it out and kind of do it the old-fashioned way," Dickert said of the Cavaliers. "We have to be able to play our game on our terms."
Virginia, meanwhile, is trying to stop a slide that has put October on the wrong side of the ledger. The Cavaliers are 1-3 this month after opening September 3-1 and briefly breaking into the Top 25.
The last two weeks have at least shown some fight. Virginia lost by 10 at then-No. 24 SMU on Oct. 17, then pushed Duke for most of the night before surrendering the deciding drive late.
Will Bettridge’s 30-yard field goal gave Virginia a 16-13 lead with three minutes left, but Duke answered with a seven-play, 75-yard march for the winning touchdown.
The Cavaliers leaned on Jekail Middlebrook in that one. He ran for 117 yards and a touchdown and leads a deep backfield with 513 rushing yards on 105 carries and five total touchdowns. Beau Pribula, though, has been held without a touchdown pass in each of the last two games and has thrown only two during Virginia’s October skid.
Scoring has been a problem. Virginia has topped 16 points only once in its last four games. That stands in sharp contrast to two games earlier in the month, when the Cavaliers piled up 101 points combined against Norfolk State and Delaware.
"Guys have got to strain a little bit harder," Elliott said. "They're working hard, but when you're playing playoff-style football every single week and it's coming down to three to five plays, you never know which one of those plays is going to make the difference in the game."
In Other News...
Wake Forest Enters A Pivotal Stretch With New Momentum On Both Sides
Wake Forest heads into its final five games coming off a bye week with a little more confidence than it had a few weeks ago, and the reasons are easy to see on both sides of the ball. The offense has found a better rhythm on the ground, with multiple backs sharing the load and giving the Demon Deacons more ways to move the chains. For a team that needed signs of balance, that kind of distribution matters.
The defense has offered a similar lift, especially up front, where the line has been stout against the run and disruptive enough to make quarterbacks feel the heat. Freshmen have also become part of the story, giving Wake Forest some needed depth and energy as the season tightens up. With the schedule now entering its most important stretch, those young contributors could end up shaping how far this team can push the momentum it has built. [Read more 🡒]