They can, it wouldn't make sense from a marketing and optics perspective.
They don't want to tell the world how the new redesigned MBP is the best laptop in the world but it's slower than the older MBPs.
They released the M5 MacBook Pro last fall, but didn't release the M5 Pro and Max models until the spring.
The optics and marketing is already fucked, the MBP goes to M5 Max, the Mini has the M4, the Studio has M2 or M3, the iMac apparently has two different kinds of M4s, it's all fucked.