Fans didn’t wait until halftime to get out of Kenan Memorial Stadium on Saturday. Bill Belichick’s North Carolina football team gave them no reason to wait.

The Tar Heels trailed Clemson 35-3 at halftime after a disastrous first half in the Tigers’ 38-10 win. Clemson had 367 yards of offense on just 36 plays before halftime and scored four touchdowns in the first quarter.

Advertisement

Clemson even scored on its first offensive play. Cade Klubnik threw a backward pass to wide receiver Antonio Williams, who then hit T.J. Moore for a 75-yard TD.

North Carolina mustered a field goal on its first offensive drive and things got way worse from there as Klubnik threw four touchdown passes over the next 20 minutes. Klubnik was 21-of-23 passing for 251 yards as North Carolina was hapless defending Clemson’s passing attack.

That aerial display from a Clemson offense that had struggled through its first four games of the season led thousands of fans to decide they didn’t need to see any more.

When the second half began, just a tiny fraction of seats were still occupied.

Klubnik threw just one more pass in the second half before he exited the game early. It was a slight surprise that Dabo Swinney’s team didn’t keep its foot on the gas in the second half, but you can also understand why Clemson felt very comfortable letting its backups get some playing time. There was no way that North Carolina was going to get back into the football game.

Advertisement

North Carolina entered the game 2-2 with blowout losses to TCU and UCF, the two power conference opponents it had faced over the first four games of the season. Saturday’s game against a Clemson team that had lost to Georgia Tech and Syracuse was a good test of where North Carolina ranked in the ACC in Belichick’s first season.

North Carolina failed that test miserably.

The school fired Mack Brown after a 6-7 season in 2024. After a nine-win season in 2022, North Carolina won 14 games over the 2023 and 2024 seasons. It was easy to wonder if UNC would ever win nine games again under Brown’s leadership.

[Yahoo Sports TV is here! Watch live shows and highlights 24/7]

Belichick, of course, was a surprise choice. The six-time Super Bowl winner had never coached in college football before and UNC’s new era was billed as a chance to run the football program like an NFL team in college sports’ NIL era.

Advertisement

Just look at what North Carolina general manager Michael Lombardi said in February to the Associated Press.

“Everything we do here is predicated on building a pro team,” Lombardi told the AP. “We consider ourselves the 33rd [NFL] team because everybody who’s involved with our program has had some form or aspect in pro football.”

At the moment, North Carolina is no closer to being the NFL’s 33rd team than any of us are to walking on the moon tomorrow. Heck, North Carolina may be one of the 33 worst college football teams right now.

It was fair to expect Belichick and his staff to need some time to build a winning college program, However, you’d also expect North Carolina to not be significantly worse than it was a year ago and for Belichick and his staff to have addressed the roster better than they did in their first offseason.

Advertisement

College football’s new transfer rules allow teams to quickly rebuild from year to year and North Carolina added over 40 transfers during the offseason. But few of those transfers have made an immediate impact.

After starting the first four games of the season, former South Alabama QB Gio Lopez was replaced by Max Johnson on Saturday. And the team’s defense is still getting gashed like it was in 2024.

TCU had 542 yards of offense in its Week 1 win over UNC and UCF had 366 yards and averaged 5.5 yards per play in Week 4 when it took down the Tar Heels 34-9. Both TCU and UCF completed over 70% of their passes in those wins too.

Saturday, Clemson’s four players who threw a pass were a combined 30-of-39 for 399 yards.