Three reasons Michigan can win the 2023 national championship, and three reasons it can't

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — After eight long months, the Michigan football team’s much-anticipated 2023 season has arrived.

Saturday afternoon, the second-ranked Wolverines will kick off against East Carolina (Noon, Peacock), beginning one of their most-anticipated seasons in history. Michigan is coming off a program-record 13 wins, has its highest preseason ranking since 1991 and is he favorite to win its third straight Big Ten title, something it hasn’t done since 1988-91.

But of course, after two straight Big Ten titles that were followed by College Football Playoff losses, fans’ attention has turned to what could come after. With a bevy of returning, incoming and rising stars, many believe this is Michigan’s best chance to win a national championship of the 21st century.

We can agree with that, but can the Wolverines pull it off? We dig into that below, looking at three reasons Michigan can win a national championship, and three reasons it can’t. Obviously, a lot can change between now and the postseason, but get to know where the Wolverines stand in a number of key factors.

Why they can: The Wolverines don’t have a red-flag weakness

One of the most simultaneously fun and agonizing things about college sports is the high level of roster turnover. While professional teams can lock down star players for years or sometimes more than a decade, star players at the college level often seem to head to the pros (or in some cases, another college team) as quickly as they arrive. As a result, even top teams tend to enter each season with weak points or unknowns, as they try to replace talented players who moved on. Maybe it’s a new quarterback, or an offensive line that lost three starters to the pros, or a secondary that hadn’t recruited enough depth. Study a team long enough, and you’re bound to find an Achilles Heel that another top team could exploit.

Not Michigan, though. At least, not really.