There was supposed to be a big game in Chapel Hill, N.C., on Saturday.

Instead, Clemson visits North Carolina in a matchup of ACC teams with a combined 3-5 record — 2-5 if you count only games against Football Bowl Subdivision schools. Make that 0-5 if we’re talking about only games against Power 4 opponents.

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At Clemson, coach Dabo Swinney has been defending his record and trying to explain how a team loaded with players from last year’s conference champion has regressed.

At North Carolina, six-time Super Bowl winner Bill Belichick appears to have simply assembled a poor roster.

“What I think they miscalculated is with the way they were taking (players) in the portal and paying dudes,” said one Group of 5 head coach, granted anonymity to discuss his encounters with the Tar Heels in the offseason player acquisition cycle. “It made me wonder, did they actually understand the landscape they were in? Did they understand that they’re in the ACC, not like Conference USA or the Sun Belt? Like, we got beat by North Carolina on a bunch of kids. I was like, why the f— is North Carolina beating us on kids? When I keep running up against the same P4s over and over again in recruiting, I’m like, all right, they’re gonna suck.”

Belichick, 73, inherited a program that had won 23 games in the previous three years under Mack Brown. His first college roster has about 70 new players, between transfer portal additions (41) and a freshman signing class.

The sheer size of the portal class pushed it to be ranked ninth in the country by 247Sports, with seven four-star players. The results haven’t been there. Two of UNC’s most impactful transfers, linebacker Kimori House (second on the team in tackles) and cornerback Thaddeus Dixon (tied for the team lead with three passes broken up), followed Belichick’s son Steve from Washington, where he had been the defensive coordinator.

The Tar Heels opened the season with a 48-14 loss at home to TCU.