Danny Care believes Saturday could be Harlequins best chance to win the Gallagher Premiership for a while with Saracens set to return to the division next season.
The scrum-half will start this weekend's play-off final against Exeter Chiefs at Twickenham and attempt to help his club add to their solitary league triumph from 2012.
Saracens clinched the Premiership four times in five years before they were relegated in 2020 following a hefty points deduction for repeated salary cap breaches, but an instant return was sealed earlier in June after victory in a two-legged Greene King IPA Championship final over Ealing.
Ex-England international Care believes their London rivals will be favourites to secure more silverware next season and it adds to the feeling at Harlequins that this is their year.
"Yeah, I saw Saracens' two training run throughs the last couple of weeks. It was never in doubt," the 34-year-old admitted.
"I knew they would come straight back and I would have them as favourites to win the Premiership next year, I honestly would because of the players they have got and probably what they have gone through over the last year has brought them even closer together as a squad.
"They have still got some of the very best players in the world and I am glad they weren't in the league this year because those semi-finals would have been a lot harder to get into! But they will be top of the tree next year and fighting for the Premiership.
"So that is something, I am not afraid to say this is the year to win the league because Saracens are not in it."
Harlequins making the Premiership final in itself is a remarkable feat, with last Saturday's extraordinary semi-final comeback at Bristol just one chapter in a crazy story.
Back in January the club parted company with head of rugby Paul Gustard after only two wins from their opening seven matches and a coaching unit of Billy Millard, Jerry Flannery, Nick Evans and Adam Jones have produced a fine turnaround.
A low point over the winter was a 49-7 humbling at the hands of Racing 92 in the Heineken Champions Cup which had Care questioning "am I a good rugby player or not?" and he revealed: "We have massively changed the way we train.
"We have got that fire in our belly of we don't want to be lads who just make a final, we want to be people who go on and win it," Care said.
"I know how special that feeling is and I really, really want to do it again."
