Duke stuns Virginia with last-minute trick-play touchdown, 19-16

Duke scored the winning touchdown on a lateral-and-pass trick play with 1 minute 14 seconds left Friday night, beating Virginia 19-16 at Scott Stadium in a rematch of last season's ACC championship game. Quarterback Walker Eget tossed the ball back to running back Nate Sheppard, who threw downfield to a wide-open Brody Keefe for the score, according to Virginia's own account of the game. Kicker Gavin Strange missed the extra point, leaving the margin at three, and Duke's defense sealed the win by intercepting Virginia quarterback Beau Pribula with 36 seconds left.

The win, played during Virginia's Family Weekend in Charlottesville, pushed Duke to 5-2 overall and 2-2 in the Atlantic Coast Conference. Virginia fell to 4-4 and 2-3, suffering its first home loss of the season and its second straight defeat, having lost 23-13 at SMU the week before. Duke finished with 327 total yards to Virginia's 353 but turned the ball over only once, to Virginia's two, according to the game box score. Virginia controlled the ball for nearly 39 minutes to Duke's 21, and ran 77 offensive plays to Duke's 50, yet Duke was the more efficient offense, averaging 6.5 yards per play to Virginia's 4.6.

A rematch with history behind it

Friday's game carried extra weight because the two programs had already met twice in less than a year. Virginia won a regular-season game in Durham last November, 34-17, before Duke beat the Cavaliers 27-20 in overtime in Charlotte to claim the program's first outright ACC championship since 1962. Virginia had won nine of its previous 11 meetings with Duke before that recent swing, according to Virginia's own preview of its 2026 schedule, which described the Cavaliers as eager to settle the score from the championship game loss. Friday's rematch was instead Duke's second win over Virginia in three meetings dating to last fall, and it came on a night the home team had marked as Family Weekend at Scott Stadium.

The two coaches have built their programs along similar timelines. Elliott, a former Clemson offensive coordinator, took over at Virginia in December 2021 and led the Cavaliers to a 10-3 regular season and the program's first ACC Coastal-era championship appearance last year. Diaz, previously the head coach at Miami, was hired at Duke in December 2023 and used last season's overtime win over Virginia to deliver the Blue Devils' first outright conference title since 1962. Friday's result was therefore as much a measuring-stick game for two programs trying to sustain recent success as it was a single data point in the 2026 ACC standings.

Costly misses on both sides

Virginia led three times in the game but never by more than six points. Running back Jekail Middlebrook gave the Cavaliers their first lead with a 1-yard touchdown run on fourth-and-goal, capping an 80-yard drive in the first quarter that answered Sheppard's 32-yard touchdown run on Duke's opening possession. Kicker Will Bettridge made field goals of 21 and 32 yards in the second quarter to put Virginia ahead 13-7 at halftime, then missed a 47-yard attempt in the third. Duke pulled even at 13 before Bettridge connected from 30 yards with three minutes left, putting the Cavaliers back in front, 16-13, heading into the final sequence.

"That's potentially six more points on your scoreboard," Virginia coach Tony Elliott said afterward, referring to his team's special-teams misses.

Sheppard finished with 15 carries for 55 yards and the opening touchdown, then delivered the winning pass out of the backfield on the deciding play. Keefe caught three passes for 48 yards, with all of that total coming on the game-winning score. Middlebrook carried 24 times for 117 yards, and Pribula added 66 yards rushing to go with 158 passing yards, but he lost a fumble in the third quarter before his game-ending interception.

Virginia's defense otherwise did its job, holding Duke to 71 rushing yards outside of Sheppard's opening run and forcing the Blue Devils into just 21 minutes of possession. "We knew we had to stone the run," Virginia linebacker Kam Robinson said after the game, a plan that worked for most of the night before the single gadget play decided it.

A season that had wobbled for Duke

Duke arrived in Charlottesville off a two-game skid of its own. The Blue Devils opened 2026 with four straight wins before back-to-back losses to Georgia Tech and North Carolina by a combined seven points, both decided on the final possession, according to a preview published ahead of the game. In the loss to North Carolina the week before, Eget had thrown 24 of 38 passes for 249 yards with a touchdown and an interception, and that preview flagged the passing game's inconsistency as a concern entering Charlottesville. It also noted that a third straight conference loss risked sending Duke's season off track under coach Manny Diaz, who is in his third season leading the program he took to last year's ACC title. Friday's win instead kept Duke in the mix in a conference race that still has more than a month of regular-season play left.

What's next

Virginia stays on the road to face No. 17 Wake Forest on Oct. 31 in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, looking to avoid a third straight loss. The Cavaliers have four regular-season games remaining, two at home and two away, according to Virginia's own recap of Friday's game. Duke's full 2026 schedule, posted on the program's athletics site, shows the Blue Devils' season continuing into late November as they try to build on a .500 conference record. For Virginia, the loss means a trip to face a ranked opponent is now required just to keep pace in a conference race the Cavaliers entered the season believing they could win outright, and it drops Virginia's home record this season to 4-1, against a road mark of just 0-2.