No. 1 Miami Visits Belichick's North Carolina Seeking to End Five-Game Skid

Top-ranked Miami takes its unbeaten record on the road Saturday night to face Bill Belichick's North Carolina, a program that has beaten the Hurricanes five straight times. The No. 1 Hurricanes (7-0, 5-0 ACC) and the Tar Heels (4-3, 2-2 ACC) kick off at 7:30 p.m. Eastern at Kenan Stadium in Chapel Hill, with the game on ABC.

Miami opened as a favorite of roughly two touchdowns: FanDuel listed the Hurricanes at 14.5 points with an over/under of 52.5, according to a preview published by Yahoo Sports. The question for Mario Cristobal's team is whether one of college football's most explosive offenses can finally solve an opponent and a building that have given it fits for most of the past decade.

Miami arrives as the nation's most productive offense

The Hurricanes rank first in the country in scoring at 49 points per game and in total offense at 551.9 yards per game, according to a Yahoo Sports matchup breakdown. They last played on Oct. 24, beating Pittsburgh 52-23 at home in their first game as the nation's top-ranked team in nearly 24 years, according to ESPN.

That afternoon, sophomore receiver Malachi Toney set a Miami single-game record with 16 catches, finishing with 194 yards and three touchdowns. The previous school record was 13 receptions. Quarterback Darian Mensah completed 31 of 37 passes for 387 yards and four touchdowns.

Toney now has 66 catches for 952 yards and 11 touchdowns this season. Mensah, a junior who transferred from Duke, has thrown for 2,151 yards with 22 touchdowns and one interception. Both players are among the national Heisman Trophy betting favorites, and both have made this matchup the focal point of North Carolina's week.

Belichick's Toney problem

Belichick, in his second season in Chapel Hill, spent much of his Monday news conference on Toney. "He gets open," Belichick said, according to Yahoo Sports. "He finds ways to get open even when he's double-covered. That doesn't really stop him."

The six-time Super Bowl-winning head coach also said, "I don't really see any weak points in his game," and suggested the Tar Heels would not settle on a single answer. "I don't think it's necessarily a great idea to do the same thing every single play," he said. Asked how to stop the receiver, Belichick said, "There's no simple answer."

He was equally complimentary of the quarterback, calling Mensah an "NFL-type talent." Mensah's ball security has been a theme of Miami's season: one interception through seven games has kept the Hurricanes out of the turnover trouble that tends to swing road upsets.

North Carolina's defense has been solid by some measures and vulnerable by others. The Tar Heels allow 20.9 points per game, 41st nationally, but 372.7 yards per game, 85th, according to Yahoo Sports.

North Carolina's uneven season

The Tar Heels are 8-11 in Belichick's two seasons. This fall they have alternated close wins and frustrating losses. They opened with a 15-10 win over TCU in Dublin, Ireland, beat East Tennessee State, lost at Clemson 28-20 and fell at home to Notre Dame 37-26. North Carolina then won road games at Pittsburgh, 21-17, and Duke, 24-20, before Syracuse beat it 31-30 in overtime at Kenan Stadium last Saturday.

The Syracuse loss was the Orange's first ACC win of the season, and it ended a two-game Tar Heels winning streak. Defensive back Coleman Bryson told reporters the team had moved on: "I think we put that to bed yesterday."

Quarterback Billy Edwards Jr. has started for North Carolina, and the downfield passing game has been a weakness. The Tar Heels rank 76th nationally in passing offense and 99th with 19 completions of 20 yards or more. Edwards has completed 6 of 18 throws traveling 20 or more yards, according to Pro Football Focus data cited by Yahoo Sports.

That matters because Miami's pass defense has given up big plays. Pittsburgh produced several big plays against the Hurricanes, with receiver Blue Hicks catching five passes for 149 yards, and Florida State nearly connected on a game-tying Hail Mary earlier in the month.

A series that has belonged to the Tar Heels

For all of Miami's success this season, North Carolina has had the Hurricanes' number. The Tar Heels have won the last five meetings, the program's longest winning streak against Miami, and Miami's last win over UNC came in 2018, according to Yahoo Sports. Miami is 3-8 all-time in Chapel Hill and has not won there since 2017.

Many of those games were close. The Tar Heels' 2021 win was 45-42, according to a UNC athletics preview. That history is part of why Cristobal has refused to treat Saturday as a breather between Pittsburgh and a Nov. 7 trip to Notre Dame.

"You can just watch film on North Carolina. At the line of scrimmage, they're beating up everybody they play," Cristobal said, according to Yahoo Sports. "It's going to take every ounce of preparation and great effort to make sure we get (a win)."

Cristobal, who is 42-19 at Miami, also framed every ACC game as postseason football. "We play in this conference, and conference play in general is playoff football," he said.

Safety Zechariah Poyser echoed that message. "North Carolina has a lot of NFL-talent players on their team," he said. "This is a team you cannot take lightly."

What it means for Miami and South Florida

Miami's climb to No. 1 has been the biggest college football story in South Florida this fall, and the Hurricanes' path to the ACC title game and the College Football Playoff runs through three straight dates that will test it: at North Carolina, at Notre Dame and home against Duke. A loss in Chapel Hill would not end Miami's playoff hopes, but it would cost the Hurricanes the margin for error that an unbeaten record provides heading into November.

Here is how the two teams compare entering Saturday:

What's next

Kickoff is set for 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 31, at Kenan Stadium, with the game televised on ABC and streaming on ESPN platforms. Forecasts in a Yahoo Sports preview called for temperatures around 60 degrees and no rain.

Win or lose, Miami turns immediately to a prime-time trip to Notre Dame on Nov. 7, set for 7:30 p.m. on NBC and Peacock, before returning home to host Duke on Nov. 14 and Virginia Tech on Nov. 20. North Carolina travels to UConn on Nov. 7.