After a disappointing October, UVa football comes off of their second open date, preparing for a four-game finish. The Wahoos started the season 2-0, and then 4-1, before dropping three straight games heading into the bye. Given how their most-recent game played out, a blowout loss to a rival, it’s fair to say that the momentum created early in the season has dissipated. Now, it’s up to Tony Elliott and the rest of the program to start fresh, and create some new momentum in a challenging sprint to the finish.
The good news is that Elliott is a perfect 3-0 coming off of bye weeks at Virginia; all three wins came against ACC opponents. The bad news is that what UVa has left on the schedule is not your ordinary run of conference foes. UVa finishes with three of their final four games on the road, three against teams currently ranked in the AP Poll, with a combined record of 22-3, and then of course there’s the trip to Blacksburg, a place UVa hasn’t won in 26 years and 11 tries.
UVa goes to Pittsburgh this weekend to begin the home stretch. The Panthers finally lost a game on Saturday, getting blown out at fellow ACC contender SMU. Pitt’s defense struggled against the Mustangs’ big-play offense on Saturday, but have otherwise been quite good, and should provide quite a challenge to UVa’s offense. The health of the offensive line will be crucial for the Hoos to have a chance to pull off an upset, and they certainly can’t allow 10 sacks as they did in their last game.
After the trip to the Steel City, UVa has another tough road test, at Notre Dame. The Irish were stunned early in the season, losing at home to Northern Illinois, but since then they’ve played good football. Notre Dame is 7-1 on the year, and winners of six straight, most-recently hammering a solid Navy team 51-14. The Irish are averaging more than 36 points per game, and are looking to close the season strong, and stay in the mix for a spot in the College Football Playoff. This is another game where the Hoos will be big underdogs.
UVa returns home for their final game at Scott Stadium this season, hosting the aforementioned SMU Mustangs who are currently on quite the heater. In their first year in the ACC, SMU has immediately vaulted themselves into a contender for the conference, joining Miami as the only two remaining unbeatens in league play. SMU hasn’t lost since September 6th, and have four road wins already this year, and certainly looked the part of a conference champion in Saturday’s rout of Pitt. This one is at home, but certainly won’t be easy to pull off.
Then there’s Virginia Tech. The Hokies, and their success against UVa of late, don’t really need an introduction to our readers. Virginia Tech continued their recent trend of struggling early in the season, particularly in the non-conference, and then figuring things out. The Hokies opened the season with a shocking loss to Vanderbilt that doesn’t look too bad now, and also lost to Rutgers and Miami en route to 2-3 start. Then, they reeled off three wins in a row before losing to Syracuse in OT, without their starting QB. Tech has Clemson and Duke before the finale against UVa, so its possible the Hokies have to beat UVa to get bowl eligible, or to get to a winning regular-season record for the first time since 2019.
It’s not going to be easy for UVa to slug it out with these four opponents and pull off multiple wins, but what choice do they have? UVa squandered a 4-1 start to the season with a pair of home losses in games that they could have won, losing in very different ways, with an understandable road loss at Clemson sandwiched in between. Now, if the Hoos are going to get bowl eligible, they’ll have to do it the hard way.
How the last third of UVa’s season goes will be both revealing to where the coaching staff has their program through three years, and critical to any future success they need to have. There are many different possible outcomes here, and each will have their own reaction from the fans. If UVa loses out, quite possible given their remaining games, fans are not going to be happy with seven losses in a row, especially since it would be punctuated with a fourth straight loss to the Hokies. A win or two might quell some of the doubt, but it depends on how those results shakeout, and what the losses look like. If UVa loses games close, and manages to pull off a win somewhere, perhaps everyone will see progress has been made, but not quite enough, and everyone moves on to a critical 2025 season. If the Hoos get rolled, as they did in their last game against UNC, then it might seem that either the 4-1 start was fluky and UVa regressed to the mean, or that there’s some other internal problem, where the staff couldn’t get the team motivated down the stretch.
And then, of course, there’s the path where UVa wins two or more games in a brutal final four stretch, and everyone is happy. That’s going to be an uphill battle, but the Cavaliers still have four more chances to prove themselves and squeeze a bit more out of this season.
