Gio Lopez threw two touchdown passes and ran for three more Saturday, and Wake Forest beat Stanford 57-3 at home, the largest margin of victory in any ACC game in program history. He became the first Wake Forest quarterback to rush for three scores in a game since Jamie Newman in 2018. Steele Pizzella took over in the fourth quarter, completed two of three passes for 57 yards and scored his first career rushing touchdown. The two quarterbacks combined to go 22 of 30 for 322 yards inside a 519-yard afternoon.
Jake Dickert said afterward that he had specifically challenged the team "for a complete game, offense, defense, special teams", something Langston Hardy said they had not managed through the first four games. They managed it against a Stanford team that scored three points all day. That is the honest caveat on the whole performance. Beating up a visiting team by 54 tells you less than Wake Forest fans would like. What travels to Raleigh is that Lopez did it at full health.
What changed with Lopez
Lopez has been playing hurt essentially all season. Against Miami he went 29 of 46 for 312 yards, three touchdowns and an interception, which is a real line against a top-five defense, but Dickert said he arrived with a banged hip, was "gutting it out" and took about 20 hits, and the hobbling got worse as the fourth quarter went on. He stopped scrambling and stuck to called plays. Miami, a 20.5-point favorite, won by 13; Wake Forest trailed 31-7 in the third quarter and cut it to 31-20 before a safety ended the rally.
Now the hip injury he played through is reported as no longer expected to be a problem. That matters more in Raleigh than it did against Stanford. Lopez transferred in from North Carolina after a miserable 2025 in a pro-style offense to reunite with Rob Ezell, who coached him at South Alabama; Ezell's whole pitch was letting him improvise. Three rushing touchdowns is what that looks like when the hip cooperates.
The thing that still has not cooperated is discipline. Wake Forest took 11 penalties for 115 yards in the opener, and Dickert called that performance sloppy in several phases while declining to make it a season-level verdict. Five games in, the flags keep showing up. On the road, in a rivalry game, at noon, they are the most plausible way a better team loses.
Wake Forest at NC State, noon ET Saturday, The CW Network
The model gives Wake Forest a 59% chance in Raleigh. The series is the ACC's longest continuously played rivalry, and the venue history is lopsided. Since 2000, NC State is 10-3 at home against Wake Forest and only 3-9 in Winston-Salem.
This is also Wake Forest's first trip back to Carter-Finley since 2024, and the roster that won there is not this roster. Demond Claiborne, who ran for 136 yards and the late game-winner in that 34-30 win, is gone, along with four 2025 starting offensive linemen. If Wake Forest wins this one, it wins it with a healthy quarterback and a defense that just held an opponent out of the end zone. Not with one tailback having the game of his life.
The stakes are real without being season-defining. A win puts Wake Forest's conference title-game odds around 23%; a loss drops them to about 6%. The playoff numbers move the same direction on a smaller scale, roughly 6% with a win against under 2% with a loss. Those are two branches of the same Saturday, not a number sliding one way. And the backdrop is the one Deacons fans have been carrying since July, when ACC media voted Wake Forest 13th in the 17-team league with no first-place votes. A road win in a rivalry nobody can wave off would be the loudest answer yet.
North Carolina at Pittsburgh: root for North Carolina
This result carries a 2.0 percentage-point impact on Wake Forest's conference-title-game probability.
Pittsburgh is No. 25 and favored at home, so this is a long shot. North Carolina wins about 14% of the time. A Tar Heels upset would nudge Wake Forest's title-game chances from roughly 15.9% to 17.9%, a gain of about two percentage points, purely by putting another loss on a direct ACC competitor's record. Kickoff is noon ET on ESPN. Fun to have on the second screen; not worth rearranging your Saturday.
Full numbers are in the interactive guide, and the simulation details are in the methodology.