Stop me if you’ve heard this before — all eyes will be on Alabama on Saturday night.

There’s the obvious intrigue surrounding the Texas-Alabama game itself. College GameDay announced it was heading to Tuscaloosa for the rematch in Week 2 before the Saturday Week 1 games even started. A year removed from this being a 3-touchdown spread at Texas, Alabama is only a 7.5-point favorite. Alabama won last year’s matchup in Austin on a last-minute field goal. For the first time since 2009, Texas was picked to win the Big 12. Also for the first time since 2009, Alabama started outside the preseason top 3 of the AP Poll.

Much of that preseason skepticism was related to Alabama’s quarterback situation. It wasn’t just that the Tide replaced the lone quarterback in program history to win the Heisman Trophy in Bryce Young. It was that after an underwhelming spring game performance, Nick Saban decided to add a 5th scholarship quarterback to a room that already had 4 former blue-chip players.

But Saturday night’s showdown isn’t about the newly added Tyler Buchner. Jalen Milroe earned QB1 duties, and if you watched him in his 2023 debut against Middle Tennessee, you saw why. Playing like that at home against a Group of 5 foe, of course, won’t determine whether Alabama rises above those low preseason expectations (relatively speaking).

If Alabama’s new QB1 looks the part against Texas? Look out.

Milroe can change the Alabama conversation in 1 night.

What will that take? It won’t just take a viral highlight or 2, though it wouldn’t hurt if Milroe pulled off a play like this against one of the more talented teams in the country:

Yeah, you’ll never turn that down.

But Milroe’s ability to improvise with his legs was never in question. We saw moments of that last year in relief against Arkansas, and he did that in his lone start last year against Texas A&M. He also turned the ball over 3 times and struggled with ball security at home against an A&M team that didn’t earn bowl eligibility.

What we need to see from Milroe on Saturday night is really more of the same that we saw against Middle Tennessee. Milroe looked comfortable in the pocket while still having that internal clock necessary to attack downfield. His best play of the night might’ve been when he waited and stepped up in the pocket so that he could let his receiver get a step of separation working back to his left:

Milroe had a similar play with an even quicker decision to hit his receiver streaking from right to left downfield.

With that pass, Milroe became the first Alabama quarterback to have 3 passing touchdowns and 2 rushing touchdowns in the same game.

“Big deal. It was Middle Tennessee,” said every non-Alabama fan in human existence.

Fair. Do that against Texas and it’ll be a much different tone.

“Uh oh. Alabama has a quarterback.”

Let’s be honest. We can talk all we want about losing players like Will Anderson and Brian Branch, but the predictions of Alabama fading into obscurity were all rooted in the uncertainty behind center.

Uncertainty at the position could still exist if Milroe looks more like the guy who struggled to put away A&M instead of being the dynamic dual-threat he was against Middle Tennessee. For all we know, he’ll struggle and it’ll be up to Buchner to step in and save the day. That possibility exists. That’s the more comforting universe for the rest of the college football landscape.

The last thing non-Alabama fans need is Saban coaching up another Heisman candidate at the game’s most important position.

The side-by-side of Milroe doing that against Quinn Ewers would also be significant. Ewers was dubbed the most talented quarterback prospect ever in the 247sports rankings. He certainly looked the part in the first quarter against Alabama last year until he was injured on a hit by linebacker Dallas Turner. If Milroe is the more precise, composed quarterback, well, that’s also probably not the best look for Steve Sarkisian.

Sarkisian recruited Milroe when he was the Tide’s offensive coordinator. The third-year Texas coach was asked about the idea of facing Milroe during ABC’s broadcast of FSU-LSU on Sunday night (H/T 247sports):

“Jalen is a fantastic player at quarterback,” Sarkisian said. “We had a chance to recruit him out of high school. He’s got arm talent. He’s got leg talent. He’s a great competitor and leader. There are a lot of things we can take from last year’s game. Schematics are schematics. You find out a little bit more about personnel, whether it’s your own or theirs, and how you can matchup. But every game takes on a life of its own. We have to play better than we did a year ago. We have to make sure we prepare really well and play better football than we did a year ago.”

In Texas’ defense, it nearly knocked off the defending runner-up and it held Young to 1 touchdown and 5.5 yards per attempt. If the Longhorns can pull off a similar defensive performance against Milroe, we’ll probably still wonder if the quarterback position will be a liability for Alabama.

Either way, Saturday will be telling.

Much has been made about Saban’s preseason smiling at press conferences, and how it could be an indicator that he knows something that we don’t. It’s possible that he knows that Milroe is ready. It’s also possible that Saban has no idea how his new starting quarterback will show up with all eyes on him.

Milroe has the chance to pull off a rare feat in the Saban era — convert Alabama’s skeptics into believers. Well, maybe “believers” is too strong to describe that crowd. Let’s instead just agree that Milroe has the power to produce a simple reaction in households across America.

“Uh oh.”