Why not an ACC champion North Carolina in the Playoff?

There was something strangely familiar about North Carolina's loss to South Carolina to open the regular season, from the three interceptions tossed by quarterback Marquise Williams through the strange decision to continue passing deep inside scoring territory despite the Tar Heels' successful running game.

UNC also had lost to South Carolina in its opener two years earlier. Inconsistency had been a hallmark of Larry Fedora's tenure with the program since his arrival in 2012, which alternated brief spurts of excellence with extended bursts of mediocrity — or worse.

The Tar Heels won eight games in 2012. Seven games a year later. Six games a season ago. Losing to South Carolina, and losing in the manner they did, seemed to reinforce the theme of a program set on a downward trajectory.

Yet this team hasn't lost since: UNC owns the nation's third-longest winning streak, 11 games and counting, and heads into Saturday's Atlantic Coast Conference championship game (8 p.m. ET, ABC) as the team most likely to upset the apple cart in advance of the final College Football Playoff rankings.

"As far as where we're at right now, I think we've definitely come a long way," senior offensive guard Landon Turner said. "'I think guys are even more comfortable than we've been before."

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Maybe the Tar Heels' surge shouldn't come as a surprise — this is Fedora's fourth season with the program, after all. It was in year four at Southern Mississippi that the Golden Eagles turned the corner, going from a combined 22-17 during Fedora's first three seasons to 12 wins and a Conference USA championship.

But for UNC, there was more at play than simply learning the system. In early January, on the heels of last year's massive disappointment, players and coaches gathered for a crucial team meeting. Players voiced their concerns, with one message standing out above the rest: The general lack of accountability and leadership from the coaching staff through the roster.

"He knew he wanted to fix some things and he felt like things didn't work out the way he wanted last year," Williams said of Fedora. "So he put the ball a little bit in his hands but the majority in the seniors' and the leadership hands just to fix this team. Because we are the ones that are playing on Saturdays. They're giving us the plays and we just want to go out and execute."

Rather than let the loss to South Carolina linger, the Tar Heels turned the page. Just three wins during this streak have come by single digits; the Tar Heels have scored less than 30 points just twice. Overall, this offense leads the ACC in points per game and ranks second in yards per game, trailing only Clemson.

Confidence is high, but Clemson presents a different test. "Those guys have playmakers all over the field," UNC linebacker Shakeel Rashad said.

That UNC remains on the outskirts of the Playoff race despite having just one loss is entirely due to its schedule, which features two victories against opponents from the Football Championship Subdivision and no wins against teams currently ranked in the Amway Coaches Poll. The Tar Heels have the weakest schedule strength of the remaining Playoff contenders according to the Sagarin ratings, though they barely trail Ohio State and Iowa.

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Defeating the Tigers will take the Tar Heels' best effort of the season, if not the program's best effort in recent history. At the very least, a victory hands UNC its first ACC title since 1980 and a spot in a high-profile New Year's Six bowl — while likely sending one of Stanford or Ohio State to the Playoff.

But why not the Tar Heels themselves? Stranger things have happened: UNC rallied from an ugly loss to South Carolina to win 11 games in a row, for example.

"If we beat the No. 1 team in the country," Fedora said, "which Clemson is the No. 1 team in the country, and it's a consensus No. 1, and they've been No. 1 for a long time, I believe that if that happens, our team is deserving, yes."