The last time Virginia played in Winston-Salem on Halloween, it won 38-17, and that was in 1998.

This year’s trip looks a lot scarier, and not just because it falls on All Hallows’ Eve.

The Cavaliers aren’t going to win a shootout. They scored 16 points per game in October and converted 15 of 55 third downs. Now they’re without their leading rusher, Jekail Middlebrook, who was ruled out Thursday night. Under Elliott, UVA is 4-21 when it scores fewer than 21 points. Wake Forest has given up 24 points in its last three games combined.

Wake Forest has turned the ball over three times in seven games. Under Tony Elliott, Virginia is 3-14 when it doesn’t force a turnover.

I’ll be honest: I don’t see much of a path. Virginia would need to get a couple of short fields from its defense and hope Lopez has his first bad day of the season. That’s a lot to ask on the road against the highest-ranked team on its schedule.

Virginia (4-4, 2-3 ACC) has lost two straight and hasn’t won away from Scott Stadium this season. Wake Forest (6-1, 4-1) has won four in a row and is coming off a bye.

Why this Halloween game matters

At 4-4, Virginia needs two wins in its last four games to reach a bowl. After Saturday, it has a bye, then hosts Cal (3-5) and North Carolina (4-3) before finishing at Virginia Tech (6-2). Realistically, those two home games will determine if the Hoos will be seeing a bowl game. A win in Winston-Salem would definitely buy some breathing room, while a loss drops the Hoos below .500 for the first time this season.

Wins like this don’t come around often for Virginia. Since 2000, UVA is 4-30 against ranked teams on the road. The program has four road wins over top-15 teams, and the most recent came at No. 10 North Carolina in 2023, where Tony Muskett upset Drake Maye 31-27.

Wake has plenty to play for. The Deacons are tied with SMU for second in the ACC, which is a game behind unbeaten Miami, and they go to Dallas on Nov. 14, with a trip to Charlotte on the line. They will not sleepwalk through a home game against a 4-4 team.

Last year’s meeting still stings. Wake came into Scott Stadium in November and beat then-No. 12 Virginia 16-9, ending a seven-game win streak and handing the Cavaliers their only regular-season ACC loss. Virginia’s defense held the Deacons to 64 passing yards, but they still lost.

Chandler Morris got hurt in the second quarter, Carlos Hernandez’s 88-yard punt return was the game’s only touchdown, and UVA had the ball at the Wake 5-yard line in the final minute and couldn’t punch it in.

This isn’t the same Gio Lopez that Virginia saw last year

Virginia saw Lopez last October, when he was at North Carolina. He threw for 208 yards, a touchdown, and two interceptions, and UVA won 17-16 in overtime. He finished that season with 1,747 passing yards, 10 touchdowns, and five interceptions in 11 games.

He has topped all of that in seven games at Wake. Lopez has 1,947 passing yards, 17 touchdowns, a 67.6 completion percentage, and 9.4 yards per attempt. He has also run for 254 yards and six scores. His only interception came late in the Miami loss on Sept. 18, and he has thrown 10 touchdowns without a pick during the four-game win streak. His 84.9 Total QBR ranks the highest of any ACC quarterback on Virginia’s schedule.

Now, seven games in, this isn’t just a hot streak anymore. This is a QB in the right system and surrounded by weapons. Offensive coordinator Rob Ezell coached Lopez at South Alabama, and the two are back together.

“The quarterback just looks like a different guy,” Elliott said Tuesday. “He looks like he’s free. He’s playing inside the pocket, outside the pocket. He’s running the ball, man. He’s dishing it like a point guard. Then he’s throwing it down the field.”

Elliott's point guard comparison makes sense. Fourteen different Deacons have scored a touchdown this season. Hernandez is still the guy Virginia has to find first. He has 49 catches for 720 yards and three 100-yard games, and his 194 yards against then-No. 16 Louisville were the most by an ACC player against a ranked opponent since the 2015 Peach Bowl. He played only a few snaps at Cal before the bye and didn’t catch a pass, but he’s listed as probable. Jack Foley averages 18.6 yards per catch and had 156 yards at NC State, and freshman tight end Dominick Barry caught three touchdowns at Cal.

When Wake gets close to the goal line, it scores. The Deacons have put up points on 31 of 33 red-zone trips, 23 of them touchdowns.

Virginia’s defense deserves much better

Since the Florida State game, Virginia has allowed 25, 23, and 19 points. From the start of 2024 until this month, the Cavaliers lost only one game in which they allowed 23 points or fewer, and it was last year’s game against Wake. It has happened in each of the last two weeks, and that’s on the offense.

UVA leads the ACC in pass-efficiency defense and ranks 16th nationally. Opponents complete 53.1 percent of their passes, and the Cavaliers’ eight interceptions are the third-most in the league. Last week, they held Duke’s Nate Sheppard, the ACC’s leading rusher, to 55 yards, and Duke went 2-for-10 on third down. Virginia lost anyway, on a 28-yard touchdown pass from Sheppard with 1:14 left.

The secondary is what worries me. Safeties Brandyn Hillman and Ethan Minter and defensive back Corey Costner were questionable on Wednesday’s availability report, and cornerback Omillio Agard is out. Neither Hillman nor Minter started against Duke. Hillman leads the team with three interceptions, and Montino Williams has started the last three games at safety. Against a quarterback averaging 9.4 yards per attempt, with Hernandez and Foley running deep, a patched-together back end is a bad place to be.

Pressure would help, but it won’t come easily. Wake has allowed 10 sacks in seven games, and Virginia has 15 all season. Matthew Fobbs-White leads the Cavaliers with seven tackles for loss and had five hurries at SMU. Virginia intercepted Lopez twice last year, and I think it needs at least that many Saturday to have a real chance.

Elliott is protecting his quarterback, not everybody else

Elliott isn’t benching Beau Pribula. He’s spreading the blame around instead.

“I don’t know if putting another quarterback in there solves your problems,” he said Tuesday.

He didn’t stop there. “Everybody’s asking about the quarterback, but nobody’s telling me to replace my left tackle who, you know, didn’t play great, right?” Elliott said. He was talking about McKale Boley, a preseason All-ACC pick. He also pointed to three dropped passes against Duke and said Pribula would have been 18-of-24 if they’d been caught. After the game, he asked about Duke’s five sacks: “But five sacks... we’re putting that on the quarterback?”

To be fair, Elliott has taken plenty of it on himself, too. “A lot of that’s on me,” he said after Duke, and after the Florida State loss he said, “I’m not gonna turn on my team.” But naming your left tackle in a press conference sounds different from “a lot of that’s on me.” It shows how hard this offense has become to explain, even for the guy running the program. On Tuesday, he described it as a car that runs, then sputters and backfires.

I think Elliott has a point. Swapping quarterbacks doesn’t fix 26 sacks or three drops. But Pribula doesn’t get off the hook completely. In the first four games, two of them against FCS teams, he threw 11 touchdown passes and completed 76.7 percent of his throws. In four October games, he’s 53-of-97 (54.6 percent) for 576 yards with two touchdowns and an interception. Some of that is drops and protection. Not all of it.

This is a bad matchup for Virginia’s offense

Virginia wants to run the ball and keep drives alive on fourth down. Wake allows 2.9 yards per carry and 92.4 rushing yards per game, 11th nationally. Opponents have converted three of 13 fourth-down tries against it, the fourth-best rate in FBS. Wake also held NC State to 0.6 yards per rush, the lowest by an ACC team in any game this season.

Virginia also can’t protect its quarterback. It has given up 26 sacks, 10 at Florida State and five against Duke. Wake has 49 tackles for loss. Langston Hardy has 11.5 of them, tied for seventh in FBS, after making 17 last season, and Gabe Kirschke has 6.5 more on the other side. If Virginia lives in third-and-8, it’s going to be a long afternoon for Pribula.

UVA RB Jekail Middlebrook is officially listed as out for Saturday at Wake Forest.

RB Noah Vaughn is a new addition and is questionable.

Current available UVA RBs are Xay Davis, Xavier Brown and Peyton Lewis. pic.twitter.com/KRzHXEaOFO

— Preston Willett (@PrestonWillett) October 30, 2026

Now take Middlebrook out of it. He ran for a career-high 117 yards against Duke. Xay Davis is next up. He averages 4.7 yards per carry and ran for 107 against Norfolk State, and Xavier Brown and Noah Vaughn should get carries too if he is available. Still, it’s a lot to ask a backup to grind out four yards a carry against this front.

The only real opening is underneath. Wake's opponents complete 75.1 percent of their passes, but for just 6.1 yards per attempt and 8.1 yards per catch. Wake will let you have the short stuff and then tackle it. Offensive coordinator Des Kitchings said this week that Virginia will use more sets with extra tight ends, which makes sense.

John Rogers set career highs with five catches for 65 yards against Duke, and Dakota Twitty added three for 41. With Rico Flores Jr. out and Kam Courtney doubtful, Da’Shawn Martin (17 catches, 247 yards, five touchdowns) is the most productive receiver available.

The catch is that long drives have to end in the end zone, and Virginia’s haven’t. It reached the red zone four times against Duke and scored one touchdown. Against an offense like Wake’s, field goals are how you lose by two touchdowns.

How to watch

TV: ESPN2

Time: 3:45 p.m. ET Saturday

Location: Allegacy Stadium, Winston-Salem, N.C.

Radio: Virginia Sports Radio Network (John Freeman, Ahmad Hawkins, Jay James)

Odds

As of Friday afternoon, DraftKings had Wake Forest as a 12.5-point favorite, with the total at 48.5. Caesars opened the Deacons at -14. SP+ projects a 30-21 Wake Forest win and gives the Deacons a 71 percent chance.

Game odds refresh periodically and are subject to change. If you or someone you know has a gambling problem and wants help, call 1-800-GAMBLER.

Final Score Prediction

Wake Forest 31, Virginia 13.

Virginia’s defense will keep it respectable for a while. It leads the ACC in pass efficiency defense, it just held the league’s leading rusher to 55 yards, and it picked off Lopez twice a year ago. I can see a one-score game late in the first half.

But under Jake Dickert, Wake is 10-0 when it leads after the first quarter and 14-2 when it leads at halftime. Virginia isn’t built to come from behind. It’s 1-3 this season when trailing at the break, and it has scored three fourth-quarter points in its three ACC losses. The Deacons are rested. The Hoos are playing for the eighth straight week, without their top back and probably without Courtney, behind a line that has given up 26 sacks. At some point, Wake gets a short field off a sack or a stalled drive, and Lopez makes it count.

I’d be surprised if Virginia gets to 20. I think Wake pulls away in the third quarter, Hernandez or Foley breaks a long one, and Virginia heads into its bye at 4-5.

That’s a scary record on Halloween. Cal and North Carolina at Scott Stadium are where this season gets decided now.