Wake Forest Hands No. 12/14 Virginia First ACC Loss in Defensive Struggle

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — The stage was set at Scott Stadium. On a crisp fall night, the University of Virginia football team had an opportunity to win an eighth consecutive game for the first time in program history.

Instead, UVA suffered a painful defeat. The Cavaliers lost quarterback Chandler Morris to a second-quarter injury and fell 16-9 to ACC rival Wake Forest before an ESPN audience and an announced crowd of 55,568, the largest of the season at Scott Stadium.

On a night when Virginia’s defense held the Demon Deacons (6-3 overall, 3-3 ACC) without a touchdown, its offense turned the ball over three times and managed only three Will Bettridge field goals Saturday. Shaky special teams proved costly for Virginia too. Wake’s lone touchdown came on an 88-yard punt return late in the first half.

“We played with fire and we got burned,” UVA head coach Tony Elliott said. “We kept it close when we didn’t necessarily have to.”

Wake totaled only 203 yards on offense, but the Wahoos failed to capitalize on their defense’s dominance. “They did their part to kind of keep us within striking range,” Elliott said, “and unfortunately we didn’t play complementary football to be able to put enough points up to win.”

For the Hoos (8-2, 5-1), the loss was their first since Sept. 6 and will halt their national ascent, at least for a week. UVA was No. 12 in the latest Associated Press poll and No. 14 in the College Football Playoff rankings.

This marked the fourth time in the past five games that Virginia finished with fewer than 330 yards on offense. The Hoos gained 237 against Louisville, 301 against Washington State, and 259 against North Carolina, yet still found a way to win each of those games.

Against Wake, UVA totaled 327 yards on offense, but 97 came on two plays: a 54-yard run by Daniel Kaelin, who replaced Morris at quarterback midway through the second quarter, and a 43-yard run by tailback J’Mari Taylor.

“The defense played their butts off tonight,” Virginia center Brady Wilson, “and as an offense, we’ve got to do better. It inspires us seeing the defense playing as hard as they did.”

On the first possession of the game, linebacker Kam Robinson blocked Wake’s punt, and the Hoos took over at the Deacons’ 24-yard line. The drive that followed, though, ended not with a touchdown but with the first of Bettridge’s field goals.

Virginia also reached the red zone on the series on which Kaelin replaced Morris, who took a shot to the head after sliding at the end of a run, a hit for which a Wake defender was penalized for a personal foul. That drive, too, ended with a Bettridge field.

Morris did not return to the game and watched the ending in street clothes. Elliott said Morris told him “he was feeling all right. We’ll know more when we get some more tests early in the week, tomorrow and on Monday. But any time you get hit in the head or up above the neck, you’ve got to make sure that you take that with a lot of caution. And so [the medical staff was] being very cautious, but from what I’ve seen out there, he seemed like he was doing OK.”

The Cavaliers came into the game as one of two FBS teams to have not lost a fumble all season. Their fortunes flipped Saturday night. The Deacons twice recovered fumbles after jarring the ball loose on sacks of Kaelin, and they pounced on another fumble, this one by Taylor, with 2:52 remaining.

Even so, the Hoos, who are 3-0 in overtime games this season, had a chance to put themselves in another one Saturday night.

After the defense forced Wake to punt, the offense took over at Virginia’s 42-yard line with 2:28 to play. Kaelin completed his first six passes on this drive, the last of which, to wide receiver Trell Harris, gained 3 yards and brought up fourth-and-3 from 5.

With the crowd holding its collective breath, Kaelin tried to hit wideout Jahmal Edrine in the right corner of the end zone. This pass fell incomplete with 13 seconds left, though, ending the Cavaliers’ comeback hopes.

Kaelin, a redshirt freshman, finished 18-of-28 passes for 145 yards. He wasn’t intercepted.

“I think he handled it great,” Wilson said. “He got thrown into it, and he didn’t stutter or anything like that. He put his foot forward and just kept working, and he inspires us to do better when we see him out there.”

Elliott said he was “super proud” to see Kaelin “come in and give us a shot.  Ultimately, he gave us a chance to win.”

Kaelin said the experience he gained Saturday night “will definitely be helpful moving forward.”

Virginia is one of five ACC teams with one conference loss each. Elliott, who’s in his fourth year at Virginia, said he reminded his players after the game that they can still achieve the team’s top two objectives. The Cavaliers want to win the ACC title and beat Virginia Tech for the Commonwealth Cup, “and we still have an opportunity ahead of us with the next two ball games,” Elliott said. “So let’s not let this beat us twice.”

The loss stings, Wilson said, “but everything’s in front of us still.”

The Cavaliers had to eat “humble pie,” Elliott said. “Coaches, players, all of us, we gotta own it. We gotta go back to work, figure out where we can get better and stay together, because we still got everything ahead of us.”

Robinson led Virginia with 10 tackles, and safety Devin Neal had eight. Linebacker James Jackson made seven stops.

Jackson, one of the team captains, said the Hoos have bounced back from a loss once this season, and he’s confident they’ll do so again.

“What we do next is we prepare for the next opponent,” Jackson said, “and we go back to our goal of trying to be 1-0 next week. And that’s what we’re going to do as a team.”

After a loss, Jackson said, “you let it sting and it stings really bad and it hurts, and you’re kind of fueled by that. And that’s what happened in the past. That’s what happened in September after NC State. Guys remember that and we really felt that pain after a game. We felt like we should have won. After that happened, we were able to have some success, and that’s what we want to continue to do.”

UP NEXT: Virginia has two regular-season games left, the first of which is on the road. At 3:30 p.m. next Saturday, the Cavaliers meet the Blue Devils (5-4, 4-1) at Wallace Wade Stadium in Durham, N.C. The game will air on ESPN2.

Virginia leads the series 41-33 and has won eight of its past nine games with Duke. Last season was the first since 1962 that the schools didn’t meet in football.

Duke lost at UConn on Saturday, 37-34.

Virginia Team Notes 

• Virginia’s seven-game win streak came to a close. The win streak tied for the program record. UVA also recorded seven-game streaks in 1914, 1945, 1949, 1990 and 2007.
• UVA’s five-game win streak in ACC play – a program record – also ended.
• With an overall record of 8-2, UVA is still off to its best start since 2007.
• The Cavaliers are now one of five ACC teams with only one loss in conference play (Duke, Georgia Tech, Pitt, SMU and Virginia).
• The result was UVA’s first home loss of the season and first since the SMU game in 2024.
• The night game was UVA’s fifth at Scott Stadium this season. UVA is now 4-1 in home night games this season.
• UVA dipped to 35-18 in the all-time series with Wake Forest, which began in 1889. The Demon Deacons have won three straight games at Scott Stadium (2012, 2021, 2025).
• Five of the Cavaliers’ last six games have been decided by one score. UVA is now 4-1 in such contests. The Cavaliers had also won their previous four games decided by one score.
• For the first time this season, UVA lost a fumble after losing three fumbles to the Demon Deacons. Miami and UVA were the only two FBS teams to have not lost a fumble entering Saturday’s contest. UVA had 10 fumbles entering the game, none of them were recovered by a UVA opponent.
• Despite the loss, Virginia outgained Wake Forest 327-203. Virginia has outgained its opponent in both losses this season (NC State & Wake Forest)
• The 203 yards of total offense by Wake Forest are the fewest allowed by UVA since 2022 against Georgia Tech (56 rush, 146 pass). 
• UVA’s stop on fourth down at the five-yard line in the second quarter was the second goal-to-go stop of the season. The other came against Florida State on the first of two interceptions by Ja’son Prevard.
• Virginia held the Demon Deacons to only 64 yards passing, the fewest by a UVA opponent since Nov. 17, 2018, against Georgia Tech, when the Yellow Jackets had 37 yards through the air.
• Wake Forest completed only nine passes, the fewest by a UVA opponent since 2021 (Virginia Tech). The Cavaliers’ defense surrendered no passing yards in the third quarter.
• Virginia recorded its second blocked punt of the season. It marks the first time UVA has blocked two punts in a season since 2013. Coming into the week, only 17 teams in the country had multiple blocked punts.
• UVA surrendered a punt return for a touchdown for the first time since 2017, when Pitt’s Quadre Henderson returned a 75-yarder at Heinz Field.
• The last time Virginia gave up only 16 points or less in a loss was in a 14-12 overtime decision against Miami on Oct. 9, 2022.
• The announced crowd of Saturday’s game was 55,568, which marks the first time since 2008 in which UVA has drawn a crowd of at least 50,000 in three consecutive games.

Virginia Individual Player Notes 

• Kam Robinson blocked a punt on Wake Forest’s opening drive. It marked the first blocked punt by a UVA player since Caleb Hardy’s in UVA’s 2025 season opener against Coastal Carolina (8/30).
• In Robinson’s last five games, he has two interceptions returned for touchdowns, a tackle for loss that resulted in a game-winning safety and a blocked punt.
• Robinson had a game-high 10 tackles in the contest, the fourth double-digit tackle effort of the season.
• J’Mari Taylor was two yards shy of 100 yards rushing and hauled in a career-high six passes for 30 yards. It marked the fifth time this season with 85 or more rushing yards and his fifth game with 100 or more all-purpose yards.
• Daniel Kaelin’s 54-yard rush in the second quarter was the 12th run of 50 or more yards by a Cavalier quarterback in program history. It was the longest since Brennan Armstrong’s 64-yard touchdown rush against Richmond in the 2022 season opener.
• In the third quarter, sophomore wideout Kam Courtney had a career-long 34-yard reception.
• Receiver Cam Ross played in his 50th collegiate game on Saturday.

Offensive Starters: QB #4 Chandler Morris, RB #3 J’Mari Taylor, WR #7 Jahmal Edrine, WR #11 Trell Harris, TE #0 Sage Ennis, WR #6 Cam Ross, LT #52 McKale Boley, LG #77 Noah Josey, C #76 Brady Wilson, RB #60 Drake Metcalf, RT #68 Jack Witmer.  

Defensive Starters: DE #14 Fisher Camac, NT #90 Jahmeer Carter, DT #91 Jason Hammond, DE #17 Mitchell Melton, LB #1 James Jackson, LB #5 Kam Robinson, CB #19 Emmanuel Karnley, CB #9 Jordan Robinson, NB #10 Ja’son Prevard, S #30 Ethan Minter, S #27 Devin Neal. 

Game Captains: #0 Sage Ennis, #1 James Jackson, #4 Chandler Morris, #90 Jahmeer Carter.