It’s fitting that Texas football coach Steve Sarkisian likes boxing considering the heavyweight slugfest he’s expected to lead the No. 1 Longhorns into against No. 5 Georgia at Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium on Saturday (6:30 p.m., ABC).

Football and boxing are a lot alike, Sarkisian said on Thursday during his weekly pregame media teleconference. The name of the game is putting together what you and your team believe is a winning game plan and entering the arena to execute the plan while understanding the need to be flexible and make adjustments.

That’s when the balancing act of being true to your identity and doing what’s necessary to win begins.

“You go into a boxing match, coming out in the opening round and the guy starts fighting you southpaw, you’d better be ready to adjust,” Sarkisian said. “I think football is very similar to that. We have to have a game plan and then we have to have the willingness to adjust, but we’ve got to make sure that we throw our best punches, too. We can’t always just react to the opponent.”

With upwards of nine potential first-round picks in the 2025 NFL Draft expected to be on the field Saturday, including a pair of Heisman Trophy-caliber quarterbacks with Quinn Ewers leading a potent offense for the Longhorns and Carson Beck lighting up opposing defenses for the Bulldogs, there will be no shortage of talent on both sidelines. Whether Texas (6-0, 2-0 SEC) or Georgia (5-1, 3-1) gets the most of out what each squad has will be determined by the sweet science of coordinators and play-callers matching wits.

The undercard is Pete Kwiatkowski‘s Longhorn defense, a unit that leads FBS in scoring defense (6.3 points per game allowed) and total defense (229.7 yards per game allowed), trying to keep Beck and offensive coordinator Mike Bobo‘s offense out of the end zone.