Set to square off on Saturday afternoon in Seattle in what should be a contender for national Game of the Year — and perhaps even a preview of the Pac-12 title game — all eyes are on No. 8 Oregon’s Dan Lanning and No. 7 Washington’s Kalen DeBoer.

They arrived at this point in time from vastly different perspectives, one via reload and one via rebuild, one defensive-minded and one offensive-focused, one a hotshot 35-year wunderkind, soaring up the Power 5 coaching ranks, the other spending a dozen years toiling in the obscurity of NAIA football.

But they are in this position because of one important commonality.

They are bridge-builders, not bridge-burners. And it is their relationships that got them here, and the successes of both coaches and, by extension, their teams, seem to be inextricably intertwined with the fates of their quarterback connections.

But while you can argue that it was fate that originally brought Dan Lanning and Bo Nix and Kalen DeBoer and Michael Penix together for the Game of the Century, you’d be selling all four parties short.

College football is a relationship game, and Lanning and DeBoer’s respective successes are case studies in the power of open lines of communication.

Consider: These coaches did not just have to recruit their star quarterbacks, they had to re-recruit them.

And there is a very good chance, in today’s world of bruised egos and inflated dollars, that both Nix and Penix could have landed elsewhere in 2022, or left for the NFL in 2023.

Instead, they are here, ready to compete for a Pac-12 regular-season championship, a berth in the Pac-12 Championship game, a potential College Football Playoff spot, and even a Heisman Trophy, for which Penix and Nix are top contenders.

*****

For Lanning, Nix came into his world via a surrogate, Kenny Dillingham, but Lanning is the one who landed Dillingham and Dilly is the one who stayed right with Nix.

They’d come to know each other closely in 2019, Dillingham’s lone year as Auburn’s offensive coordinator and Nix’s freshman season.

There was an instant rapport. And instant success. In his very first college game, Nix connected with Seth Williams on a 26-yard touchdown pass with 9 seconds remaining in a 27-21 win over No. 11 Oregon at AT&T Stadium in Arlington.

Nix thrived under Dillingham that year, earning Freshman of the Year honors in the SEC — no small feat — after leading the Tigers to a 9-4 record with 16 touchdowns and just 6 interceptions.

Then Dilly left for Florida State, and Nix languished for 2 years, not looking bad, per se, but sure not looking like he did under Dillingham. Simply put, the astronomic trajectory was muted.

So when the rising young coach decided to join Lanning’s first staff in Eugene last year, Nix gave Oregon and Lanning a look. Instead of returning to Auburn to close out his career, Nix headed west, and a star was born.

Last year, over 13 games, Nix set career-highs in passing yards (3,593), passing touchdowns (29), rushing yards (510), and rushing touchdowns (14).

With Dillingham taking the head-coaching position at Arizona State, Nix very well could have headed to the desert or to the NFL.

Instead, he returned to captain a team with national title aspirations, a goal that has become increasingly clearer with both Nix’s and the team’s success. Oregon is 5-0 with a league-best scoring margin of 258-59 and back-to-back 42-6 conference wins.

Nix has been downright exceptional as a passer, taking another step this season under Lanning and new offensive coordinator Will Stein. He leads the nation in completion percentage at 80.4, has 15 touchdowns to 1 pick and is averaging nearly 300 yards per game.

“I think Bo is operating extremely efficient,” Lanning said after Oregon handled Colorado, 42-6. “Will (Stein) and him are (so) on the same page. We’re sitting in some huddles and Bo called some of those touchdown plays. He’s sitting here saying, ‘What do you guys think about this?’ And we’re like, ‘Great call, let’s do that.’ I’m really, really comfortable with our quarterback and I know he won’t ever let the moment get too big for him.”

*****

A straight shot up the I-5 North, Penix has been arguably more brilliant for the Huskies.

And again, he’s only here because DeBoer — his offensive coordinator with Indiana — did not sour their relationship when the latter left to become Fresno State head coach in 2020.

They’d only spent that one year together in Bloomington in 2019 — the same year Nix and Dilly danced in Auburn — but we got a glimpse of what Penix could be under DeBoer. And the former 4-star recruit, who was once committed to Tennessee, was pretty darn good as a redshirt freshman. He completed nearly 70% of his passes for 1,394 yards and 10 touchdowns with 4 picks in the Hoosiers’ first 4-plus games before being sacked and smashed onto his left — throwing — shoulder in a Week 5 loss at Penn State.

Injuries became a recurring theme for Penix at Indiana. The prior year as a true freshman, Penix tore his ACL 3 games into the season and redshirted. He tore the same knee again in 2020, an injury that lingered into the 2021 campaign, which culminated in Penix suffering an AC injury.

He never played more than 6 games in a season for the Hoosiers and with his career going down the tubes, he entered the transfer portal at the end of 2021.

It just so happened DeBoer had landed a plum gig at Washington and needed a quarterback.

“I think, first of all, he was in the portal and, when he saw I was coming to Washington, I think, without even us contacting each other, I knew he was there and he knew I was here and I think there was, ‘Hey, this could be what evolves and what happens,’ but we just kind of let it run its course for a few days,” DeBoer told the 247Sports Football Recruiting Podcast last year. “Once we got on the phone and rekindled and just started talking, man, I just went back to 2019 and remembered how much fun it was coaching him.”

It’s pretty darn fun in purple, too.

After leading the country in passing yardage per game last year and finishing the season with 4,641 yards, 31 touchdowns, and 8 interceptions for a passer rating of 151.3, he’s been leagues better this year.

Penix sports a passer rating of 196.5, 3rd in the country, with a nation-leading 399.80 passing yards per game and 16 touchdowns with 2 picks.

Playing the lead chair in offensive coordinator Ryan Grubb’s orchestra, Penix has nearly perfected the pace and tempo that the Huskies’ offensive gurus are preaching.

Anyone who has watched Washington has seen perhaps the best passing attack in the country. Most of the time, there’s no perhaps. The Huskies have been that good.

“He’s a team-first person and player in our football program, and he’s been that way since Day 1,” DeBoer told the Seattle Times’ Mike Vorel in July. “He’s easy to root for, not just externally but from the inside. The guys all believe in him and they want him to have these opportunities, these awards, these moments. They’re happy for him. He’s doing the work. He’s not an ego guy. He does all the right things. And our guys love his performance on the football field.

“I think (for Penix) it’s the balance he has with football and perspective on life. Him coming back for another year shows this level of maturity that is different than others.”

That’s the thing.

This story could have been — and was — written last year, when the teams met in Autzen Stadium. But that was a very different setting.

The Huskies came into that game 8-2 and ranked 25th in the country, coming off a 4-8 debacle that precipitated DeBoer’s hiring. Oregon was 8-1 n Lanning’s first year after Mario Cristobal jilted the Ducks to return to his alma mater Miami.

That day, the Huskies won, 37-34, saddling Oregon with a Pac-12 title-game-killing 2nd loss.

It was a loss that helped fuel Nix’s return. Just as unfinished business caused Penix to give it another go in Seattle.

“I think (for Penix) it’s the balance he has with football and perspective on life,” DeBoer told the Times. “Him coming back for another year shows this level of maturity that is different than others. He obviously had to weigh a lot of different things, but he just loves college football. He also believes there’s another level of development he can take on and add to his game to even raise his stock for next year. He’s just really enjoying the moment, and he’s worked hard to make sure this season is a successful one.”

Now they meet in Seattle on Saturday, ready to compete for a conference regular season championship, a berth in the Pac-12 championship game, a potential College Football Playoff spot and even a Heisman Trophy.

What a game it will be.