Michigan football all-in on winning national championship in 2023
ANN ARBOR – Michigan cornerback Mike Sainristil announced after the Big Ten championship in December that he would be returning for a fifth season because he was confident that was the best decision for his future.
Little did he know at the time that a bevy of other key players from last year’s 13-1 team that came one late touchdown drive short of reaching the national championship also would come back for one more shot at college football’s top prize instead declaring for the NFL draft.
Star running back Blake Corum got the ball rolling in early January when he announced he would be back for his senior season, and the list continued to grow: receiver Cornelius Johnson, offensive linemen Trevor Keegan and Zak Zinter, linebacker Michael Barrett and defensive lineman Kris Jenkins all followed.
“Just guys buying into the program, willing to do whatever it takes to help this team get to their first national championship in I’m not sure how long.,” Sainristil told reporters last week. “That’s what we want. We’re trying to set a new standard for the program and the teams to come in. Just being bought into what we want to do here and the culture we want to leave. I feel like guys want to leave legacies when they leave here. Personally, for myself, I want to be a guy that when freshmen come, (they say), ‘I want to be like Mikey Sainristil. I want to be like Blake Corum, I want to be like Trevor Keegan, Zak Zinter.’
“I could go down the list of guys who have the opportunity to do that. I think the whole mindset of coming back for that fifth year is, ‘Alright, let’s put everything into this last season. Let’s put everything into a winning national championship and get to that goal.”
The sentiment is widely shared in the locker room, and players are confident they have the group to achieve it.
Two years in a row, Michigan has fallen one game short of the biggest stage. In 2021, it was an underdog against a Georgia team chock full of first-round draft picks and was overmatched in a 34-11 loss.
But the Wolverines raised the bar in 2022, rattling off 13 straight wins to begin the year and, on paper, had a favorable matchup against TCU in the Fiesta Bowl semifinal.
Instead, two J.J. McCarthy pick-sixes, squandered scoring opportunities on the goal line, costly missed tackles and a poorly executed final drive derailed their perfect season. Jim Harbaugh’s team was left watching Georgia throttle the Horned Frogs 65-7 in the national championship on Jan. 9.
“It wasn’t great to watch because you watch and you’re like, ‘We should have been there,’” senior edge Braiden McGregor said Monday. “We had a lot of mistakes that game and we kind of beat ourselves. You watch the other semifinal game, and I was like, OK, they (Ohio State) hung with them and they should have won.
“The biggest takeaway is, we get to that time this year – we shot ourselves in the foot two years – not prepared the first year and then this year being prepared. We just got to get there, and when adversity hits, we just got to say, ‘Whatever, just got to keep going.’ I feel like that was the biggest thing. We didn’t lose a game and there really wasn’t a lot of games where there was adversity. I think when that happened, it was like a little tough for us. But I think we’ll be prepared this year.”
With the upperclassmen who decided to return continuing to mold with a promising core of younger players like quarterback J.J. McCarthy, linebacker Junior Colson, running back Donovan Edwards, cornerback Will Johnson, safety Rod Moore and more, the Wolverines have one clear goal in mind in 2023.
Winners of 25 its past 28 games, including two over Ohio State, Michigan is considered to have a legitimate shot at the program’s first NCAA championship since 1997.
“We’re all here to win a natty,” fifth-year offensive lineman Karsen Barnhart said Monday. “We’re not here to go win a Big Ten championship game – we are, but at the end of the day, we want to win a natty. Everybody wants to be great.
“Confidence level is through the roof. There’s so many good guys that can play here and there’s so many explosive players and players all want to win and all have a big role. I think the season we had last year and all of us having those big roles is only going to help us for the ‘23 season.”
Michigan’s season doesn’t start for another six months, but the preparations have already begun this spring.
“We all know that we can’t get to a national championship without getting through Week 1, Week 2 so on and so forth,” Sainristil said. “But that’s the mindset I think this team has right now.”
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