We made it, you guys.

After 3 months of football, 12 months of hype and enough intrastate trash talk to last a lifetime, Iron Bowl week is here. It hasn’t lost any steam. If anything, it’s only picked up in the recent weeks.

In rivalry week, no game in the college football landscape will matter more than Alabama-Auburn. This isn’t a game that’s just being played for pride or bragging rights. For both teams, next Saturday could make or break division titles, conference titles and national titles.

It’ll be a new chapter in the storied rivalry that’s full of just as many crazy off-field moments as on-field moments. Legacies will be defined, and legends will be born.

Hopefully, though, no more people will be shot as a result of this rivalry. Really.

Somehow, this game will mean everything we hoped it would when the calendar turned to the 2017 season. No hype videos or commercials (yes, I believe I can win this fight tonight, ESPN) will be needed to add some juice into Jordan-Hare Stadium next Saturday. College GameDay will be in the house, not that it matters. No ESPN personalities or GameDay signs can make this game any bigger than it already is.

In a year loaded with snoozer SEC on CBS games — even Georgia-Auburn was a rout — Saturday figures to be unlike anything we’ve seen all season.

At least we hope it will be.

Credit: John David Mercer-USA TODAY Sports

How fitting it is that both Alabama and Auburn will enter Saturday in their current predicaments.

Alabama is, as expected, unbeaten and No. 1. It’ll mark the seventh consecutive year in which the Tide is ranked in the top 2 for the Iron Bowl.

But perhaps some of the usual invincible Alabama bravado will be on the back burner heading into this one. After all, the Tide are banged up a bit more than usual. The schedule also hasn’t worked in its favor, at least not from a strength standpoint. Alabama has yet to face a team ranked in the current top 15 teams in the College Football Playoff poll.

Auburn, on the other hand, got the litmus test it was looking for last week against Georgia. That game, to many, showed why the Tigers were arguably the most dangerous team in the country heading into the home stretch. Kerryon Johnson ran all over an elite defense, Jarrett Stidham picked apart the Georgia secondary and the Tigers defense looked as dominant as ever.

But perhaps Auburn simply played the perfect game, and it’s due for a Clemson/LSU-like regression against a more experienced Alabama squad. Shoot, maybe the Tigers are in for a Mercer-like regression. For all the talk about Auburn’s upside, the downside has been widely swept under the rug in the past few weeks.

All of those reasons are why the hype is so great. The national pundits will claim that they know how next Saturday will play out. Maybe they’ll lace the 2010 game or the 2013 game into a prediction.

I’ll let you in on a little secret, though. None of us really has any idea how this will shake out.

We can sit here and draw up x-factors and situational stats, but will any of that actually matter? Lord knows anyone on Alabama or Auburn can be the x-factor in a game like this. That’s why they’re playing for Alabama and Auburn in the first place.

When those players signed their letters of intent, it was so that they could play in a game of this magnitude. Even Nick Saban, who doesn’t like to hand out superlatives for anything, said on Saturday that Alabama-Auburn was the best rivalry he’d been a part of.

Um, ya think?

All week, the talking heads might try and debate if Alabama-Auburn is the best rivalry in college football. We won’t find that out. What we will find out is far more important than that.

Can Stidham deliver the game of his life? Will Alabama’s depth step up in typical Alabama fashion? Will Johnson do his best Le’Veon Bell impersonation again? Will Jalen Hurts pick up what would be perhaps his most impressive win to date?

All of those questions will get answered. We’ll get clarity. We’ll get 3 1/2 hours of all-or-nothing, Iron Bowl goodness. We’ll get the game we’ve been waiting for.

Finally.