Alabama has taken the field with advantages seemingly everywhere on seemingly every Saturday afternoon since Nick Saban started winning national titles in Tuscaloosa 13 years ago. Those indisputable edges have most always translated into victory celebrations on Saturday nights, and 6 times since 2009 they’ve pushed Alabama to the mountaintop of college football.

This particular Saturday afternoon, the Crimson Tide will make the rarest of visits to Austin to face old friend Steve Sarkisian and his rebuilding Texas Longhorns. Texas has talent everywhere, because it’s Texas, even though the Longhorns are unranked and coming off a 5-7 season in Sarkisian’s 1st year. Alabama was installed as an early 19-point favorite, which would be a lot of points if the game were at Bryant-Denny Stadium. But the number really sticks out like a sore thumb because it’s a road game.

Vegas oddsmakers expect Bama to take care of business, despite the potentially tricky noon start, and the fact that this will be Texas’ Super Bowl and the decibel level at Memorial Stadium will be soaring on each and every play. This brings us back to the built-in advantages the Tide has in almost every game it plays. It will have them again this Saturday. Not all of them, just most of them, and maybe enough to make that big point spread valid.

A full list and complete breakdown of all the edges Bama has over Texas would be way too long. So we’ll narrow it down to the 5 most glaring advantages the Tide will take into Saturday’s nonconference showdown.

1. Quarterback

By far the biggest advantage goes 1st. Bama will trot out 2021 Heisman Trophy winner Bryce Young, while Texas will counter with freshman Quinn Ewers, who will be starting just his 2nd collegiate game.

This might not be the easiest of tasks for the great Young, with that aforementioned noon start (11 a.m. in Austin) and it being a true road game in front of a ravenous fan base that doesn’t worship him. Instead, the crowd will be out to see Young stumble for a change, and those Longhorns defenders might run a tick faster than they usually do because they want to make Young stumble for a change.

Still, it’s a showdown game, it’s a road game, and Young experienced plenty of that in his 1 season of starting to feel pretty comfortable on Saturday. Last season, in the high-profile road games, Young had 3 touchdown passes in the win over Florida, 369 yards passing and 3 TDs in the loss at Texas A&M when he lost despite putting up 38 points, and 317 yards and 2 scoring strikes while leading a dramatic comeback win in the legendary 4-overtime Iron Bowl thriller at Jordan-Hare.

Young showed the ultimate poise and resilience that day, hooking up with Ja’Corey Brooks on a 28-yard TD pass with 24 seconds left in regulation to tie the game at 10 after his offense had been held without a touchdown for more than 59 minutes. It wasn’t particularly pretty that day for Young or Bama. because oftentimes, it’s not pretty on the road. But in the end, Young emerged victorious. And ultimately, that’s all his teammates and fan base cared about, especially in an Iron Bowl.

Meanwhile, Ewers is 6-foot-2 and has enormous potential. He wouldn’t be at Texas and he wouldn’t have once been at Ohio State if he didn’t. He was a superstar in the viciously competitive world of Texas high school football, amassing 6,445 yards passing, 73 touchdown passes and just 8 interceptions at Southlake Carroll.

But it won’t be high school on Saturday. It’ll be Bama’s defense with Will Anderson Jr. and Jordan Battle. Maybe Ewers rises to the big occasion and plays great on Saturday. But it’s a tall task when your only real college experience came 7 days earlier against Louisiana-Monroe.

2. Experience in big games

All you need to know about Bama’s massive advantage here is that it has a wide receiver whose experience winning the biggest of games didn’t even come with the Crimson Tide. Jermaine Burton helped Georgia slay Alabama in the national title game before entering the transfer portal and being plucked away by Saban. So a hostile environment in Austin on the 2nd Saturday of September isn’t going to faze him.

It won’t be a problem, either, for Young or Anderson or Battle or Brooks or Jase McClellan or any of the veterans on the Bama offensive line. Bama has big-game experience everywhere. The players who come to Tuscaloosa are built for these games. They’re molded to go to and win at LSU, Florida, Tennessee, Ole Miss and Auburn. They’re groomed to win SEC title games on a neutral field in Atlanta, and then go win College Football Playoff semifinals and championship games.

This has all been sometimes true at a tradition-rich program like Texas, just not in recent years. For the Longhorns, Saturday will be a learning experience. For the Tide, it will just be their latest big-game experience.

3. Pass rush

Anderson, Dallas Turner and Co. will likely be making life a little chaotic for Ewers in his 2nd collegiate start. They do that to seasoned SEC quarterbacks. And if they do it again Saturday, dominating the line of scrimmage in the process, it might be the biggest reason of all that Bama wins and does it comfortably.

Texas had 3 sacks last Saturday against Louisiana-Monroe, with sophomore defensive end Barryn Sorrell getting 1.5 and adding 2 tackles for loss. Senior linebacker DeMarvion Overshown was a Butkus Award semifinalist last season and will be on Young’s radar all day. But the Tide should be able to wear down Texas with its ferocious pass rush. The Longhorns’ rush will be hard-pressed to duplicate that for 60 minutes.

4. Offensive line

This is the least sexy one but probably the most important. Everyone knows that the offensive line sets up everything, and if you have a solid one, you can win a lot of games, especially road games in tough environments.

Bama’s massive O-line shouldn’t be frightened at all by Overshown or the crowd noise, despite having 2 new tackles. The interior of the line is back from last season and has experience in the biggest of moments, which should give the Tide a healthy edge over a Longhorns line that is young, raw and lacks depth.

5. Coaching

The final advantage will be short and sweet. Saban has won 7 national titles, 6 at Bama, and he has been in enough big games for 100 coaching lifetimes. He has coached in a ton of hostile SEC road environments over the past 2 decades at LSU and Alabama, so Memorial Stadium will be deafening but not uncomfortable for Saban. He won’t make every right call on Saturday, but he’s likely to make more of them than Sarkisian, his former offensive coordinator.

Sarkisian has coached in his share of big games, too, at Washington and USC, but can’t measure up to what Saban has seen. Nobody can, of course.

Just 1 of many obstacles Texas will have to overcome on Saturday.