This is the Depth Dossier: the Virginia Cavaliers, Week 9.

Wake Forest beat Virginia 51 to 7 Saturday, the worst loss of head coach Tony Elliott's tenure, and it dropped the Cavaliers below .500 in a game where almost nothing went right.

Let's get the ugly numbers out of the way. Virginia ran the ball 19 times for just 16 yards and went 1 for 12 on third down. The Cavaliers got all the way to Wake Forest's 40-yard line four separate times and came away with zero points on those trips. Two punt returns, one for 30 yards and one for 64, flipped field position and handed Wake Forest touchdowns. And there was a real moment, down 17 to nothing in the second quarter, when Virginia went for it on fourth and one at the Wake six and got stuffed. That one might've changed everything. The one bright spot was wide receiver Da'Shawn Martin, who caught nine passes for 119 yards, including a 47-yard touchdown. By the numbers, this was about as lopsided as a 51 to 7 score suggests.

So what happened underneath all that? Start with the run game, because there wasn't one. Virginia averaged about one and a half yards a carry, and nearly 40 percent of their runs got stopped at or behind the line. Elliott didn't sugarcoat it afterward. "If you're going three yards and a cloud of dust," he said, "you better be able to stay on the field." Without any ground game, third down became impossible.

Fourth down had actually been a Virginia strength coming into the week, with 16 conversions on the season, fourth-most in the country. It picked the worst possible moment to fail. That direct-snap call on fourth and one at the Wake six, which has been attributed to offensive coordinator Des Kitchings, gained nothing. Quarterback Beau Pribula also threw a fourth-down interception in the first quarter. Virginia actually went 3 for 7 on fourth down overall, but the misses came exactly when the game was still in reach.

Defensively, Wake Forest ran the ball 51 times for over 300 yards, while Virginia's pass rush could only muster a handful of hurries and tackles for loss. Elliott said the defense "allowed them to extend some plays," and missed tackles were a running theme all night.

And then special teams turned a bad loss into a blowout. Kam Shanks's two punt returns covered 94 yards combined and set up Wake Forest touchdowns directly. Elliott called it what it was: short fields that flipped the game.

Now, on to the depth chart, because availability was a massive story here. Virginia played this game missing 24 injured players, and lost three more during the contest. None of the specific injuries have been reported yet, but that number alone is staggering heading into the final stretch. Elliott did say losing linebacker Jekail Middlebrook was more about the game's complexion than a decisive factor by itself.

On a rough night, Da'Shawn Martin's performance stands out. That was a career high in catches and yards, his 10th career touchdown, and he's now just 19 yards from 1,000 for his career. Linebacker Montino Williams has led the team in tackles three straight games now, with a game-high 10 in his fifth career start. He looks like the clearest building block on a defense that otherwise couldn't get off the field. On the pass rush, Kam Robinson and Matthew Fobbs-White both recorded sacks, Robinson's second straight game with one and Fobbs-White's team-high fifth of the season.

The biggest question going forward is at quarterback. Pribula's fourth-down interception and his overall play are drawing scrutiny, and Elliott didn't close the door on a change, saying everything will be evaluated over the next two weeks, though he also cautioned that another quarterback might not solve the problems. Backup Eli Holstein played 20 snaps and didn't grade out well either. Nothing is official, but with Virginia needing to win two of its final three games, against Cal, North Carolina, and at Virginia Tech, just to reach a bowl, the quarterback room is very much in play.

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