​Last week saw a couple of surprising results around ACC football, including two involving teams that will now meet today. Last Saturday, the North Carolina Tar Heels took down previously unbeaten and ranked Pitt, giving UNC their best win of the Bill Belichick era so far. Meanwhile, after entering their game unbeaten, Duke was upended by a Georgia Tech team that had struggled to start their 2026 campaign. In both cases, the games were close and it’s far from guaranteed their either result will be a sign of things to come for the Heels or Blue Devils. However, we’ll get another data point later today.This afternoon, UNC and Duke will face off in their annual rivalry clash for the Victory Bell. Duke comes in riding a two-game win streak in the series. In his introductory press conference, Belichick somewhat famously said “Beat Duke,” but his 2025 Tar Heel squad wasn’t able to do so. They’ll get another chance today.Despite last week’s results, Duke has looked like the better team so far in this season. They come into this matchup 4-1, including a solid road non-conference win over Illinois. While UNC has a decent non-con win themselves over TCU, they also dropped an egg against Clemson and got blown out by Notre Dame despite a very solid start. While Duke did drop their own egg against Georgia Tech last week, as mentioned, all their other games have ended up as multi-score wins.That brings us to this week’s matchup. UNC will have to go into Wallace Wade Stadium for this afternoon’s clash. While the broadcast of any Carolina/Duke game in any sport will make mention of the short distance between the two schools, this is still a trip into enemy territory for the Tar Heels. Duke goes in as the betting favorites, although not by as much as they might have been previously.That brings us to our weekly gameday question: who are you picking to win this afternoon’s matchup?Even with North Carolina picking up the win over Pitt last week, I have to admit I’m still fairly skeptical of the Tar Heels. They were facing Pitt’s backup quarterback after Mason Heintschel went down for the season with an ACL tear, and the game still ended up very close and not entirely convincing. For that, I still don’t think they can go in and beat a good Duke team, even one coming off a bad loss. It’s also possible Duke got caught up in a look ahead spot with a rivalry game on deck. For that, I don’t feel great about it, but I’m going to pick Duke to win 27-20. [Editor’s note: writer was disciplined for this prediction.]