Picking playoff contenders and a champion for 2023

Which college football teams look positioned to contend for a National Championship in 2023?

It’s time to put it all together and try to project the playoff field and National Champion for the 2023 season.

Last year I applied the following America’s War Game theories in trying to project which teams could contend.

1. Space Force theory: Teams gain the biggest advantage from fielding elite athleticism at four particular positions, left tackle, Edge, deep threat wideout, and cornerback.

2. The rule of three: Playing winning defense requires fielding at least three defensive backs in your defensive alignment who can carry a vertical route 1-on-1.

3. Pro-style passing wins championships: The hardest style of offense to either execute or to stop is a drop back passing game. If you can wield such an offense with elite wideouts, you can dominate.

Here were my picks:

• Clemson

• Alabama

• Ohio State

• Michigan or Utah (likely Michigan)

Not great, but not terrible. I chose the wrong horse in the southeast (Clemson over Georgia) and overlooked TCU up until the very end.

In the actual playoffs I picked a repeated of “The Game” reasoning Michigan would run over TCU in the trenches on either side of the ball while noting Georgia is actually vulnerable to receivers and a pass game like Ohio State had last year. Two reasonable picks but I went 0-fer.

Since then I’ve made two significant tweak to the above formula for choosing future champions.

Changing the formula to make choices in 2023

The first tweak I’ve made this offseason was to elevate defensive tackle amongst the space force, accepting Bill Parcell’s “planet theory.”

Parcell’s point was that the planet’s supply of 300+ pound elite athletes was the most limited.

So the ranking now goes:

1. Elite deep threat

2. Defensive tackle (I think 3-technique but we’re still conducting tests here)

3. Island cornerback

4. Left tackle

5. Edge

You want elite athletes at all of those positions to stand out in football, but the first two are really in their own tier.

The next tweak is to count any sufficiently talented and effective deep passing game as having the potential to deliver a championship. For instance, Ohio State’s style last year wasn’t really heavy on dropback passing. They had a lot of shot plays where Ryan Day was spoon-feeding relatively easy reads to C.J. Stroud, who then delivered some beautiful throws to generally wide open, elite wideouts.

Georgia couldn’t defend it.

If a defense like Georgia can’t defend something like that without the star receiver getting knocked out of the game, isn’t a high caliber shot passing game worthy of inclusion? Additionally, a lot of winning dropback passing often amounts to isolating a top receiver to run an option route, which isn’t really that different from shot passing.

So we’re altering things a bit in light of the success of 2020 Alabama and 2022 Ohio State in obliterating defenses with passing attacks which aren’t overly dropback, progression oriented. I still maintain that an elite dropback game is something else, but I think the key component is actually having a wide receiver who’s consistently open moreso than the specific scheme utilized to spring him.

The 2023 formula for choosing a champion

We’re going to subordinate everything else to our first, golden rule and then proceed from there.

The golden rule is, standing out nationally requires fielding really good and ideally elite pieces at the two positions which matter most, wide receiver and defensive tackle.

From there, having a sophisticated plan of attack in the passing game is also important and meeting the “rule of three” is also essential if you don’t want to get caught in shootouts every week.

Let’s revisit my picks for 2022.

Clemson I expected would rebound at wideout but I wasn’t totally sure. Defensive line looked great in the preseason but they lost defensive tackle Bryan Bresee, the offensive line regressed without their longtime position coach (replaced by a young staffer, like everyone else at Clemson). Everyone blames D.J. Uiagalelei but I’m telling you, the dude was not set up for success and I wasn’t lonely on “Cade Klubnik ain’t fixing any of this” island for very long.

Georgia checked all the boxes, had more value from their defensive tackle talent than I had adjusted for in Space Force theory, and Brock Bowers challenged the notion that a tight end couldn’t have a receiver-esque impact on offense.

In the Big 10 I was right to elevate Ohio State and Michigan. Because of the rule of three and the sophistication of their schemes I expected Michigan would be imposing again while Ohio State has had an embarrassment of riches at wide receiver and several space force positions for a few years now.

I was tempted by Utah but couldn’t get over the receiver talent, or lack thereof, which again may not have mattered because tight end Dalton Kincaid was so good. Utah didn’t really have the overall talent. They certainly didn't have a dominant defensive tackle but defense wasn’t usually the issue.

Alabama I was pretty skeptical of all offseason so I’m not sure why I put them in the playoffs, probably a lack of options in the SEC West. I also foresee TCU and didn’t have any similar underdog I particularly loved save for Utah. I considered USC but was worried about a year one transition for Lincoln Riley, deservedly so.

TCU didn’t quite follow a normal formula to get there. They did have two wideouts who’d be drafted along with a cornerback (and two other defensive backs I expect to be drafted next year). Max Duggan also gave them a veteran presence at quarterback and a lot of “get out of jail free” card improvisation with his 4.5 speed. Their run game included an NFL left guard and NFL running back and at defensive tackle they basically built a dominant 3-technique in the aggregate.

Freshman nose tackle Damonic Williams gave them sturdiness at the point of attack while defensive end Dylan Horton (6-foot-4, 275 pounds, 4th round pick) and linebacker Dee Winters (5-foot-11, 227 pounds, 4.49 40, 6th round pick) darted around to each take turns playing as an Edge or a slanting 3-technique.

It’s hard to anticipate which young players will emerge to have big seasons, who will endure injuries, and which teams will evolve their strategies to make the most of their talent. However, I think the closer we can get to identifying which teams can check off the essential tasks of a championship team, the closer we’ll get to anticipating and understanding why certain teams win.

Picking the 2023 field

I’m going to follow a similar formula as last year, going region by region to try and find the champion.

You tend to get participants from one of four regions I’ve identified. These are bigger regions, not intended to match Colin Woodard’s American Nations map, but more to capture the main conferences and divisions that tend to yield playoff participants.

The Southeast

The SEC West

The Midwest

The West

By the southeast I mean the East Division of the SEC AND the main contenders from the ACC. The Midwest catches basically any team from the “North” as all the powers are basically in the Midwest or at least the Rust Belt, including some other ACC squads. The West is anything west of the Mississippi that isn’t in the Big 10 or SEC (yet). Obviously the SEC West means that specific, power-packed division.

Here’s the breakdown of these regions’ participation in the playoffs:

Six out of nine seasons saw each region get one representative in. See how easy this makes it for picking the field?

Obviously if all four of these regions don’t have a participant then you’ll get a double up from one. Thus far the doubling has always come from the southeast or the Midwest, the SEC West usually has a clear king (except for 2011) and the West just hasn’t been strong enough to send two teams. Maybe in large part because both Texas and USC have been down for the duration of the playoff history.

Last year my breakdowns and guesswork lead me to believe it was pretty likely we’d see the Midwest double up and get both Michigan and Ohio State in. Sure enough…

Now we’re going to break these regions down one at a time, surveying all the championship-relevant teams in each region by our chosen metrics, then I’ll make a call on which four are most likely to make it.

I think this year the West (ironically so) may be the most competitive and potentially the most likely to get two teams in, so we’ll start there…