At the start of the year Tyrone would have targeted, at the very least, a place in the All-Ireland football quarter-final.
They achieved that but it was a bumpy enough road to get there. In Ulster they fell at the first hurdle against Monaghan, a game where they played their best football of the year in the opening half.
In the round-robin trek, they lost to Galway, beat Armagh and then drew with Westmeath. John Heslin could have won it for the midlanders - and earned them progression at Tyrone's expense - only to spurn a late setpiece.
It was also a day that Darragh Canavan further enhanced his reputation as one of the best forwards around, kicking ten points. That performance saw him named as the PwC GAA/GPA Player of the Month for June.
Canavan was also one of the few Tyrone players who could say they put in a decent shift in the recent All-Ireland quarter-final defeat to Kerry.
In assesing the 2023 championship, the Errigal Ciarán clubman was accentuating more the positives, even though he felt they were fortunate to get that draw against Westmeath.
He told RTÉ Sport: "We got lucky to be fair. John Heslin doesn't miss too many frees. That summed up our year. We followed that with a good performance against Donegal and then couldn't get going against Kerry."
On what gives hope to Canavan going forward, he said: "I think we're in a decent place, we showed signs that we can challenge the best teams in the country when we're on it. I suppose the inconsistency let us down this year, we couldn't maintain it through a number of games.
"The first half [against Monaghan] was as good as we played all year, played some good, attacking football and were pretty solid at the back. Then we took our foot off the gas and let them back into it. If you give Monaghan a chance they are very good at dragging themselves back into games.
"I don't think we're too far off it. We have good Under-20 and minor teams coming through, plenty of good footballers. Tyrone's in a good place, just getting that consistency and stringing a few good championship games together.
"This year was definitely an improvement on last year. It's just a shame that weren't able to do what we wanted to do in certain games."
On the defeat against Kerry, Canavan was making no excuses.
"Kerry were very well set up to be fair, we expected them to be well set up, their tackling forced us to make the wrong choices, forced us into lots of mistakes."
Looking ahead to the Kingdom's Sam Maguire decider against Dublin, the Red Hand attacker was not prepared to stick his neck out as regards to who'll lift the famous trophy.
"It's a 50-50 game. Having seen Kerry up close, first hand, they were very, very impressive, a quality outfit. The Dubs have come back this year playing some good football, have most of their All-Ireland winners back in Jack McCaffrey and Paul Mannion. They have added something. It will be tight and a good final.
On the future of Brian Dooher and Fergal Logan as joint managers, Canavan told reporters at today's award event that it would be "a good thing" if the duo stayed on.
"We haven't really heard much since the (Kerry) game but the players will always back them two boys, no matter what their decision is.
"Yeah look, if they wanted to come back for another year, another few years, it would definitely be a good thing for Tyrone."
