There's a scenario that I couldn't have envisioned at any point this offseason that's now become entirely realistic.

It's not that Arch Manning would have an up-and-down start to 2025. After all, he was expected to face some top-shelf defenses and, despite what was said/written about him leading up to his first season as QB1 in Austin, he wasn't a finished product. It wasn't even that the Red River Rivalry could feel like a coin flip in ways that last year's matchup wasn't. After all, Oklahoma wasn't expected to be the offensive mess that it was last year.

But here's a sentence that would've knocked me over with a feather back in August -- it won't surprise me if Michael Hawkins Jr. outplays Manning with his unranked Texas squad on Saturday in Dallas.

To be clear, Brent Venables hasn't officially ruled out John Mateer after the hand injury that he suffered in a win against Auburn, but he did say that he's "assuming he won't be available" (H/T George Stoia). That went against what Pete Thamel reported on Tuesday morning.

Mateer was the Heisman Trophy favorite until news of his surgery and subsequent absence was announced. If he does end up playing -- Steve Sarkisian said that Texas is preparing for him to play -- then nobody would be surprised if he was the best quarterback on the field.

For the sake of this conversation, though, let's focus on how wild it is to think that Hawkins could be the better quarterback in a battle with Manning a year removed from being on the wrong end of a 34-3 beatdown.

The surroundings are a big part of that. Hawkins has a group of wide receivers that are actually healthy, and he's got one of the top emerging play callers in the sport in Ben Arbuckle. Compare that to a unit that had its top 5 receivers out by late-September and who also watched its offensive coordinator lose his job by late-October. As a true freshman, Hawkins wasn't in position to handle that after relieving the ineffective Jackson Arnold. For all we know, nobody in college football could've handled it.

Last week at Florida, the offensive line didn't do him any favors. He took 6 sacks and the Texas running backs had 9 carries for 11 yards. On the season, he's been pressured on 42.7% of his drop-backs and on throws 0-9 yards past the line of scrimmage, he's averaging an SEC-worst 3.7 yards per attempt. While Manning is an effective runner, that's been mostly as a scrambler, where 64% of his rushing yards (128 of 201) have come from. There's no such thing as an "easy button" to hit in this Texas offense through 5 games.

And now, of course, Manning will be tasked with figuring things out against an Oklahoma defense that's:

You get it. If there's a defensive category, just assume that Oklahoma is among the top 5 nationally in it. Well, except turnovers forced. If you can believe it, all of that defensive production hasn't resulted in a single turnover, which makes the Sooners the only FBS program without a takeaway. Nobody would be surprised if that ended on Saturday with an R Mason Thomas strip sack of Manning.

That's why it would be a minor miracle if Manning played his most poised game of the season after being completely bottled up in the first 3 quarters against the 2 Power Conference foes that Texas faced this year. Sure, those were both road games in hostile atmospheres. Only half of the Cotton Bowl will be hostile for Manning, though after he and the Texas offense got booed by the home fans in the 3rd quarter against UTEP, I suppose we can't assume that there'll be a more favorable atmosphere waiting for the reeling Longhorn offense.

Last year, that crowd witnessed a slow start for the Texas offense that needed a jump-start late in the 2nd quarter from a 44-yard catch and run from Ryan Wingo. Can Wingo be the difference-maker who shakes the Texas out of a slow start to 2025? If there was a silver lining of the Florida loss, it was watching Manning and the preseason All-SEC selection have their best connection of the season for a touchdown.

Including his performance against an overmatched Sam Houston State defense, Wingo has 166 yards and 3 touchdowns the last 2 games. Manning's expected go-to target is emerging, which is a positive heading into a matchup against an Oklahoma secondary that had its hands full against Cam Coleman. If the Longhorns do flip the script against Oklahoma, a resurgent passing attack figures to be a key part of it.

Again, though. It's hard to say that's imminent with a group of Texas pass catchers who only have 4 contested catches through 5 games. That's tied with Georgia for dead last in the SEC. Even Oklahoma already has 12 contested catches on the young season, 4 of which came from the indispensable Deion Burks, who was part of OU's decimated group of pass catchers last year. Texas hasn't found a chain-moving presence like that yet.

Whether that's more of a Manning issue or a schematic issue, what's undeniable is that through 5 games, Sarkisian hasn't been able to figure out the ideal 2025 version of his offense yet. That surfaced in the form of the nation's No. 116 3rd-down conversion rate (34.4%). A porous offensive line and a quarterback who has struggled with short-yardage accuracy could be most to blame for that.

Whatever the case, Texas will have nobody to blame but itself if loss No. 3 occurs in Dallas. It would be an even tougher pill to swallow if it came with Hawkins on the other end of it. That year-to-year difference would put things into a harsh perspective for the preseason No. 1 team, who didn't seem panicked following the loss at Florida. There seemed to be a feeling that a matchup with Oklahoma would be exactly what the Longhorns needed to work their early-season woes.

There's certainly a world in which it all comes together for Texas. Rivalry games have a funny way of doing it. Taking down the No. 6 team in the country -- no matter who is at QB -- would bring all of those preseason aspirations back into reality for the unranked Longhorns.

But reality heading into Saturday is that nobody in the preseason could've envisioned a Red River preamble quite like this. Nothing suggests that a banner day from Manning is imminent.

If he's the losing quarterback on Saturday, nobody should be knocked over with a feather.