Orlando Pride Have No Reason to Be Scared with Playoffs Looming

The Pride will be back in action on Sunday for Decision Day, and hopefully the result of their game against Seattle will turn out to be one last treat on Halloween weekend. I am not a fan of horror movies, even during the spooky season, so preferably the Pride play well and that game is a fun two-hour watch and does not turn into A Nightmare on Church Street.

If so, the Pride will likely conjure up three points, leaving the fans screaming and with faces shining, after exorcising the demons of that rough patch of the season they had in August and September. They will have to do it without Carrie (as they have all year), but if so, they will secure the three seed and be in a good position to chase the ring for a second consecutive season, and silence all those doubting lambs.

All right, that is enough of those puns. Hopefully that was not too horror-ible.

I mentioned the ring, as in the championship ring, and while they are not the favorite that they were last season, the Pride are still the defending champions. Orlando and Kansas City are current-ly (sorry) the only teams with three wins in their most recent five games. The Pride have looked much better in their recent NWSL games (let’s all agree to forget that the Concacaf W Champions Cup happened), and that improvement comes at the perfect time with the playoffs starting next week.

Once the playoffs start, it is effectively a brand new season, since the NWSL operates like that other four-letter acronym, the NCAA, with a single-elimination bracket. During last season’s playoff tournament there were no upsets, with the higher seed winning each of the seven games, but in 2023 there were only six teams that made the playoffs, and the lower seed won four of the five games, with the lowest seed winning the championship. A tournament of upsets was followed by a tournament of chalk, so my hunch is that the 2025 playoffs will end up somewhere in the middle, but that, as they say, is why they play the games.

This weekend’s games will determine the final seeds, and the Pride can finish as high as third or as low as seventh, depending on the results. We will not know if Sunday’s home game against Seattle is the team’s final home game of the season until it concludes, but one thing we do know is that while eight teams technically have a chance to win the championship, recent history, and common sense, say that the likely champion will come from the league’s top seeds. With that in mind, I took at look at every champion since the Pride joined the NWSL to see what those teams had in common, and to see which teams in 2025 also have that in common.

Below is a table with the performances of the eight champions between 2016 and 2024 (except in 2020, when there were no playoffs), using data from Opta on fbref.com (all metrics are on a per-game basis unless noted):

It is not a coincidence that I chose 13 categories on Halloween week, as I tried to stay high level with the basic categories that drive winning and losing: goals, shots, and positive ball movement towards the opposition net. The numbers in the middle column are the averages of the eight champions, and the numbers on the right are the champion that had the worst performance in that metric among the eight champions. It is worth noting that the 2024 Pride had none of the worst performances in any of the metrics, a testament to how dominant that team was during the 2024 regular season. Maybe if we stand in front of a mirror and chant “2024 Pride” five times in a row that team will suddenly appear? Let’s all agree to try it next week.

From this table it is immediately clear why those eight teams became playoff champions, as they were all great during the regular season. The gaps between the average offensive performances (goals scored, shots, shots on target, progressive carries, and progressive passes) and what those teams allowed on average defensively on the same metrics are all large, indicating teams that were excellent on both sides of the ball.

As we go into the 2025 playoffs, there are nine teams left for the eight playoff spots. Among those nine, let’s take a look at how they stack up in these same categories (teams are listed in the order of the current standings):

Kansas City clearly stands out as a team outperforming not only everyone else in the NWSL this season but also many of the past champions. But the Pride, even with the loss of Barbra Banda and a pretty dire run of form during the summer months, are still playing pretty close to the performance level of many of the recent champions as well. They are only outperforming the recent champions on the defensive side of the ball, limiting opposing teams to a lower number of shots on target, progressive carries, and progressive passes.

Defense wins championships, or at least that is how the saying goes, and if the Pride are going to go on a three-game win streak in the postseason and repeat as champions, it is likely that it will be due to the defense clamping down and keeping the opposition from breaking out in transition (progressive plays) and putting a lot of shots on goal.

It is unlikely that they suddenly find their offensive form after a season in which the second-leading scorer was opposition own goal (six goals so far!), but then again, maybe Haley McCutcheon will don her McClutcheon uniform again, the Marta magic will show up, Ally will hit her maximum Wattage, another Ally will deliver her Lemost, Simone will remind everyone you can’t spell Jackson without Jason and Jacquie will put the capital O in Ovalle. The heart of the (2024) champion is still beating, and as another saying goes, the season ain’t over ’til it’s over.

My glass, as always, is half full, and you may think I am a psycho, but I still believe that the Pride can make PayPal Park on Nov. 22 their final destination.