Raise your hand if you guessed 4 months ago that the starting signal-callers in the Iron Bowl would be Mac Jones and Bo Nix.

Put your hand down, liar.

Maybe you were one of the people who guessed that Nix would beat out Joey Gatewood — I certainly wasn’t one of them — but you definitely didn’t picture Tagovailoa being sidelined for the Iron Bowl. That’s reality for Alabama, which has 1 more opportunity to impress the selection committee before the Playoff field is released.

This matchup, which finally won’t have the winner play in an SEC Championship, could come down to which young quarterback wins the day.

And to be clear, Jones technically isn’t “young” for a college player. He was in Tagovailoa’s 2017 class. Technically, Jones could go off, lead Alabama into a backdoor way to the Playoff and do what Cardale Jones did in 2014 before tackling the sudden NFL Draft decision. That’s not the focus Saturday.

Jones is “young” from an experience standpoint. Even compared to his true freshman counterpart, it’s night and day in terms of legitimate game experience:

[table “” not found /]

So yes, obviously the guy with an entire season’s worth of starts is going to have the advantage in that department. And Nix has seen better defenses than Jones, who has starts against Arkansas and Western Carolina with the vast majority of his career playing time coming late in lopsided Alabama victories.

But experience doesn’t win the game. If it did, Jake Bentley would be undefeated. It was a short 2 years ago that Jarrett Stidham outplayed second-year starter Jalen Hurts to win in his first Iron Bowl.

To say Stidham and Nix are different players would be like saying Nick Saban has a tendency to get frustrated by unforced errors. Duh. Unlike Stidham, Nix has been better as a runner than a thrower this year. Go figure that the very identity for which many said had to be at the root of Malzahn’s offense in the post-Stidham era has actually been somewhat underwhelming.

The question is how Malzahn plans on using Nix in what could be an important game for both of their futures.

Nix isn’t about to walk into Jordan-Hare and become Joe Burrow. We’ve seen more than enough to know who Nix is as a thrower right now — inaccurate, inefficient and indecisive on plays that aren’t slants to Seth Williams. Ask any Auburn fan and they’ll tell you there’s a reason the Tigers have struggled to beat elite teams since the Oregon game and they’ll say it’s because of the passing game struggles.

It’s the complete opposite of Jones, who we’ve seen look plenty capable as a thrower. By “plenty capable,” that means he should be able to get the ball to the likes of Jerry Jeudy, Henry Ruggs and DeVonta Smith in space. Those guys make things look pretty easy:

Obviously, Auburn is much better defensively than Western Carolina. If Smith out-runs 4 defenders on the short side of the field like that against Kevin Steele’s defense, well, knock me over with a feather and wake me up when the clock hits zero. I don’t expect that to happen, at least not with any sort of consistency.

Still, that big-play ability gives Jones the advantage in this matchup. As fantastic as the Auburn defense has been — a unit that is up there with the best in the country — I’ll take Jones over Nix on 3rd-and-10 all day, every day.

The wild card in this situation is how flexible Malzahn will be with Nix. Malzahn has been reluctant to use Nix as a runner. At least it feels like it. Perhaps the depth behind him was an issue, as well as the fact that Nix isn’t exactly a Cam Newton-type who can take SEC punishment on a regular basis.

What would I do if I were Malzahn? I’d turn Nix into John Rhys Plumlee.

That’s right. I’d take a page out of the old Rich Rodriguez playbook and try to see if Nix can duplicate Plumlee’s 109-yard rushing day against the Crimson Tide. And that was against an Alabama defense that was healthier than it’ll be Saturday.

The injury issues that Alabama had in the front 7 have been well-documented. The November injuries to Raekwon Davis and D.J. Dale didn’t exactly help a defense that lost preseason All-American Dylan Moses and starter Josh McMillon before the season even started. As a result, Alabama is actually just the No. 7 run defense in the SEC. Rare, I know.

If Malzahn decides that Nix is going to run the ball 20 times in the last game of the regular season, all bets are off. Maybe an offensive line playing for Malzahn will have all the more reason to fly off the ball. Auburn will have a chance to control the clock, and with the addition of a healthy Boobie Whitlow and D.J. Williams, this ground game can be what defines the 2019 Iron Bowl.

But would I bet on that happening? Probably not. I, like the Auburn fans who are beyond frustrated with the lack of offensive progression, have seen enough from Malzahn’s unit to expect to see that Saturday.

What I do expect is a down-to-the-wire game that shows why Jones is in the better offensive situation than Nix, and ultimately, it’s what fuels more success in those key third-down situations. We’ll be reminded that Jones isn’t Tagovailoa, but also that Nix isn’t even on Jones’ level as a passer, despite having more meaningful game experience.

It wasn’t the quarterback matchup anyone predicted. Maybe, just maybe, Nix and Jones will leave their own unique mark amidst an atypical set of circumstances surrounding one of the best rivalries in sports.

Here’s hoping.