Game Analysis

VIRGINIA (-3.5)  37   Wake Forest  34

I see a lot of points being scored here on a calm night in Charlottesville. Virginia quarterback Brennan Armstrong showed some promise last season and he’s completed 72% of his passes while averaging 10.0 yards per pass play with a pretty big sample (127 pass plays). The Cavaliers have averaged 7.5 yards per play or more in each of their 3 games while averaging 41.3 points per game. That includes two games against Power 5 teams Illinois and North Carolina and Wake Forest just gave up 8.2 yppp and 6.1 yppl to a struggling Florida State offense last week. It was the 6 FSU turnovers that led to that easy win and I project 502 total yards at 7.2 yppl for the Cavaliers in this game against a Wake Forest defense that isn’t nearly as good as their 13.3 points per game allowed suggests. Two of those games were against horrible offensively teams Old Dominion and Norfolk State and they would have given up around 30 points to FSU had the Seminoles not kept turning the ball over.

Wake Forest has averaged 39.3 points per game but that’s misleading given their more modest 6.0 yards per play (against teams that would combine to allow 6.5 yppl to an average offense). I actually rate the Demon Deacons’ attack as average and Virginia’s defense now rates as worse than average after giving up 59 points on 699 yards at over 10 yards per play to North Carolina last week. That’s obviously an aberration but I had the Cavs’ stop unit rated at 0.2 yppl worse than average entering the season and Wake Forest should move the ball pretty well.

My ratings favor UVA by 5.1 points but Wake Forest applies to a 93-38-1 ATS early season situation while the Cavaliers apply to a 31-86-2 ATS situation. I recommend passing the side with a slight lean towards the over.