Rivalry Week has already seen one upset that will affect a conference championship and College Football Playoff seeding. Could we see another one?

On Friday, Texas upset the Texas A&M Aggies to give A&M its first loss of the season and knock the Aggies out of the SEC championship game. Michigan is in a strikingly similar position. Ohio State is undefeated and No. 1 in the CFP rankings. It needs a win to set up a meeting with Indiana in next week’s Big Ten title game.

OSU has been largely unchallenged since defeating Texas in Week 1, and now it faces its biggest rival, which is hasn’t beaten in four years. Can the Wolverines pull another upset? It’s “The Game,” and we’re tracking the top moments and biggest plays:

Ohio State wide receivers Jeremiah Smith and Carnell Tate are expected to play against Michigan on Saturday, sources told ESPN.

Both Buckeyes stars have been limited in practice while dealing with lower-body injuries. The wide receivers are expected to be listed as questionable on the Big Ten availability report, but the expectation is they are available to play barring anything unforeseen in warmups.

Smith missed last week’s win over Rutgers after sustaining an injury against UCLA on Nov. 15, when he was seen with a limp leaving the field.

Tate hasn’t played since Nov. 1, as he was held out of the Purdue game on Nov. 8 after something bothered him in warmups and he was “a little tight,” coach Ryan Day said at the time.

Smith, a sophomore, is regarded as perhaps the country’s best all-around player. He has 69 catches for 902 yards and 10 touchdowns. Despite missing the Rutgers game, he is still tied for the Big Ten lead in touchdown receptions.

Tate has emerged as a game breaker for the Buckeyes and a projected NFL first-round pick. His 18.2 yards per catch leads the Big Ten. He has caught 39 passes for 711 yards and seven touchdowns.

They are the top targets for quarterback Julian Sayin, who is completing 79.4% of his passes with 27 touchdowns and four interceptions.

Ohio State is on a four-game losing streak against Michigan, including not scoring in the second half last year. Tate was Ohio State’s leading receiver in last year’s 13-10 loss with six receptions for 58 yards. Smith had five catches for 35 yards and a touchdown, which was his second-lowest output in the 2024 regular season.

AUSTIN, Texas — Shortly after vanquishing No. 3 Texas A&M in a heated rivalry game Friday, Steve Sarkisian made his case for No. 16 Texas as worthy of a spot in the College Football Playoff.

The 27-17 victory was Sarkisian’s third win over a top-10 team this season — following wins over No. 6 Oklahoma and No. 9 Vanderbilt — which he touted as a first since LSU did the same in 2019.

“I think we’re absolutely a playoff team,” Sarkisian said, noting that there were pundits who argued that Texas A&M was the top team in the country by strength of schedule metrics. “We just beat them by two scores. So to me, that’s a pretty impressive win, a pretty dominant win for our team that I don’t know how many other teams can say they have wins like that on their schedule.”

Texas (9-3) also lost on the road to No. 3 Ohio State in the season opener and at No. 5 Georgia two weeks ago, finishing the season 3-2 against top-10 teams. The 14-7 loss to the Buckeyes, Sarkisian said, is the true test of what the CFP committee values, saying if the Longhorns had scheduled a cupcake, they would be 10-2.

“We went on the road to Ohio State in Week 1 and lost to them in a one-score game,” Sarkisian said. “We outgained them by nearly 200 yards, and no one else has been close to a one-score game against them. But I think more importantly, it’s the message that what do we want to send to the head coaches and the athletic directors around the country? Do you want us not to schedule Ohio State? Because if we’re a 10-2 team right now, this isn’t a discussion. We’re in the playoff. But we were willing to go up there and play that game.”

Sarkisian, in his postgame, on-field interview with ESPN’s Molly McGrath, added that “it would be a disservice to our sport” if the Longhorns weren’t in the CFP field. Later, in his full media availability, he said it would be easy for coaches and athletic directors to shy away from that type of scheduling in the future if the Longhorns are punished for such a high-profile matchup in the opening week of the season.

Senior safety Michael Taaffe, who had an interception at the team’s 3-yard line against the Aggies in the fourth quarter, agreed with his coach’s logic.

“I don’t think the committee should punish us for giving college football what they want to see,” Taaffe said. “Nonconference game, No. 1 vs. No. 2 in Columbus, Ohio, a rematch of the Cotton Bowl from last year, one of the biggest games in all college football. Everybody was tuning in for that game, and I think college football is really happy that Texas played Ohio State in Week 1.”

According to ESPN Research, the five teams ranked from 11 to 15 in the CFP rankings are a combined 4-8 against ranked opponents.

Sarkisian acknowledged that the Longhorns would be in a much stronger position without an Oct. 4 road loss to Florida but said there is precedent for such a loss as recently as last season, when Notre Dame earned a playoff berth and played Ohio State in the CFP national championship.

“The team that played for the national championship last year lost to Northern Illinois at home,” Sarkisian said, referring to the Irish. “Yet they still were good enough to go play for a national title. So I have no doubt in my mind that the team we have in that locker room downstairs is a playoff football team and worthy of an opportunity to play for a national championship.”

Texas A&M led Texas 10-3 at halftime as the Longhorns had only 112 yards and Arch Manning was 7-for-22 for 51 passing yards. But once Texas’ running game got going — Quintrevion Wisner ran for 155 yards — Manning rallied the Longhorns, finishing with 179 passing yards and 53 more rushing. He sealed the win with a 35-yard touchdown run on third-and-3 with a little over seven minutes left, sending Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium into a frenzy.

The two halves were a microcosm of the season for Manning, in his first year as a starter, when he started slowly but turned into a true dual threat for Texas over the second half of the season.

“Nobody works harder. Nobody prepares more,” Sarkisian said of Manning. “I mean, the blitz packages that A&M has is elite. It’s NFL level. And this guy managed our protections at the line of scrimmage beautifully, did a fantastic job. So all in all, I think for him to cap it off with a touchdown run was a pretty cool moment.”

Manning said he believed Texas has improved vastly this season and is playing its best football. He was asked to make his pitch to the CFP committee and obliged.

“We’re a good team, bro,” Manning said. “We’ve played a lot of good teams. We’re only getting better, and if you let us in, we can beat anyone.”

And what would he make of this season if the Longhorns don’t get in?

“I think we’re going to make the playoffs,” Manning said. “I don’t know why we wouldn’t. I’m not going to worry about that.”