UNC vs Wake Forest Betting Preview
WagerTalk college football handicapper Tony Finn offers his UNC vs Wake Forest ACC football betting preview for Saturday, November 6 at Kenan Memorial Stadium in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. At the time of posting, the Tar Heels are a -2.5 home favorite over the Demon Deacons with the total sitting at 76.5 points.
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UNC vs Wake Forest Predictions
- UNC Tar Heels -2.5 vs Wake Forest Demon Deacons
- Total: 76.5 Points
- North Carolina is 8-12 against the spread over the past two seasons, including 1-4 ATS in the Tar Heels’ last five games.
- Wake Forest has covered the spread in each of the last two meetings with North Carolina.
The Atlantic Coast Conference’s top-rated program, No. 10-ranked Wake Forest, has a Saturday contest scheduled for high noon against North Carolina. The Demon Deacons aim to keep a clean sheet and stretch their perfect record to 9-0 with a conference win at Kenan Stadium in Chapel Hill Saturday afternoon. The Tar Heels are better than their 4-4 mark but were set to fail with heavy preseason expectations. As a result, head coach Mack Brown’s squad was overvalued heading into the 2021 campaign.
The 2019 season found the Tar Heels become bowl eligible with two straight wins to close the regular season. Coach Brown and his Tar Heels earned a 56-7 victory over Mercer and followed that non-conference blowout with a 41-10 win over North Carolina State. At 6-6, the Miltary Bowl came calling, and the result of Brown’s first season back in Chapel Hill resulted in a bowl win over the Temple Owls.
The ACC has a half dozen quality football teams. However, with the Clemson Tigers not meeting expectations, the league’s shortlist of possible conference champions is without an elite squad. Furthermore, unless several fortuitous occurrences benefit the only program, Wake Forest, that can win the conference championship undefeated, the possible 14-0 Demon Deacons won’t receive a seat at the January Four table.
The Deacons exit a 45-7 blowout victory over Duke. That win improved Wake to 8-0 overall and 5-0 in the ACC Atlantic. North Carolina enters Saturday’s matchup with a level mark overall and in the ACC Coastal, 4-4 and 3-3, respectively.
College Football Saturday has arrived that finds a ranked team with a spotless record entering a matchup in which the ranked is an underdog to the unranked. This weekend’s matchup between the two ACC rivals represents a situation that has occurred an unusual number of times this season. Circa opened the North Carolina Tar Heels as 2-point home favorites with a total of 78.5. However, when this game preview went to press, there was little activity on the spread in the game while the total has fallen from the opening 78.5 to 76.5.
The host Tar Heels own college football’s 22nd-ranked scoring offense (36.5 points per game) and matchup against the visiting Demon Deacons, ranking fifth overall in the scoring department averaging 43.5 points per game. North Carolina is 70-36-2 straight up in 108 all-time head-to-head matchups against Wake Forest and ranked 10th in the preseason AP poll. We arrive in Week 10 with Wake Forest sitting in the ninth spot in the College Football Playoff rankings while North Carolina is playing to gain bowl eligibility.
Yet the Tar Heels are the favorites to walk away from Kenan Stadium on Saturday, the winning team.
Wake Forest quarterback Sam Hartman leads the Deacons into Chapel Hill with the sixth-best passing efficiency in college football. Hartman has tossed 22 touchdown passes against just three interceptions. The Demon Deacons offense ranks ninth in the country in yards per game (495.4). Despite having the play-to-play presence of a systematic unit that grinds rather than attacks with big gainers, Wake’s offensive is explosive.
The Wake Forest offense has been just good enough to cover for a defense that ranks 100th nationally in yards allowed per game (421.5). The Deacs surrender anything but a champion like 5.77 yards per play. Louisville ran and threw on the Deacs defense for a total of 514 yards, and Army finished their abuse of Wake’s defense with 50-plus points and fifteen-feet short of 600 total yards. The Orange registered in the neighborhood of 500 yards, and all things equal, deserved the win at the Carrier Dome in October.
Without breaking down in detail the North Carolina prowess when possessing the ball, know that the Heels QB Sam Howell will be the most dynamic signal-caller the Wake Forest defense will have faced this season. Howell is averaging 274 yards through the air and 100-yard rushing per game in his junior season. Additionally, RB Ty Chandler averages 5.5 yards per carry, and WR Josh Downs is fourth nationally, averaging 122.4 receiving yards per game.
The Demon Deacons have combined the offense’s ability to score with a bend and nearly broken defense that finds ways to force and take advantage of turnovers. Regression to the mean, let us introduce you to the Wake Forest Demon Deacons. There is a reason that the Tar Heels are favored in this ACC matchup, and it isn’t because they have a lesser record or sit behind the Deacons in most offensive statistical categories. It is because they are significantly more battle-tested and the superior team.
🏈 Should 4-4 North Carolina really be favored over undefeated Wake Forest? Join @JoeRaineri @CalSportsLV @davecokin and @teddy_covers for College Football Daily at 3:15pm ET / 12:15pm PT as we discuss this intriguing ACC matchup.https://t.co/kyuEOHDgL4
— WagerTalk (@WagerTalk) November 4, 2021
UNC vs Wake Forest Analysis from The GoldSheet
Mack Brown hardly seems the “I told you so” type, but the pundit class that refused to heed Mack’s warnings about overhyping the 2021 Tar Heels are now walking around with egg on their face after UNC hits November at .500 and struggling to merely gain the attention of the Duke’s Mayo or Cheez-It Bowls, a far cry from the Orange Bowl of last term. The curious turn of events in the ACC instead has seen underrated Wake Forest match its best-ever start (8-0) from the World War II era of 1944, and now in the top ten for the first time EVER. Meanwhile it’s Deacs QB Sam Hartman, off of another 400+-yard passing effort last week vs. Duke, and not Mack’s more-ballyhooed Sam Howell, getting mention in Heisman discussions past Halloween. Only downtrodden Duke has tallied fewer than 35 points against the bullet-riddled UNC defense since early September, a chilling prospect considering the Hartman-led Wake attack is scoring at a 43.4 points per game clip (No. 5 in the country). And with much of Howell’s supporting cast from 2020 now in the NFL, the Heels haven’t had the same sharp edge as a year ago to compensate.
UNC vs Wake Forest Video Preview
Wake Forest is undefeated, but still finds themselves as an underdog to their in-state rival. Is the point spread justified in this ACC rivalry? WagerTalk college football handicappers Drew Martin, Rob Veno and Tony Finn offer their UNC vs Wake Forest predictions.
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