2024 NWSL Exit Survey Diaries- The Bottom Five

With the NWSL season crawling to a close after one last ill-timed international break, it is time to say goodbye to some of our best. Well, to be more precise, some of our worst. To be even more precise, THE worst five NWSL teams of the 2024 season. Over the course of the 2024 campaign, we have talked at length about the NWSL's new-found stratification at the top, but the bottom of the table remains anything but. Almost every non-playoff team --barring the likely-to-be Spoon winners from down South-- have had at least one decent run of form and have things to look forward to going into 2025, and the five teams we will talk about today are separated, as of the time of writing, by just five points. The NWSL's expanded playoff format incentivized some of these teams to chase the glorious carrot of the 8th playoff seed and a date with near-invincible Orlando, creating some confusing motivations for the league's lower tier as a result. Fortunately for those teams that deluded themselves into thinking they had a chance to make noise in the playoffs, the NWSL draft is no more and with its departure into the annals of NWSL history goes any incentive to finish at the bottom of the table. The knock on effects are mostly good: Tanking is bad. Its anti-competitive nature has damaged other sports in not insignificant ways, and, what is the point of the NWSL if you can't watch a last place team impact the playoff race on Matchday 24?

Anyhow, here is the format for the 14 exit surveys over the next month or so: We will start at the bottom of the table and knock off teams in the order they sit in the table after Week 26. In this first installment, five teams will be covered. Let's get into it:

#14 Houston Dash

Record: 5-5-16, 20 points

Preseason Prediction: 9th

Player of the Season: Tarciane

Season in a gif:

Ohhh Houston. Houston Houston Houston. Where to begin? With the exciting new coach who had his team playing some truly horrific early soccer before disappearing and eventually leaving the club? With the club's star player who signed an NWSL record contract just six months before demanding a trade? With the GM who was fired less than two years into her tenure with the club? Houston has been an organization comfortable with being mediocre at best pretty much throughout its entire existence as a franchise. Here are Houston's finishes since they joined the NWSL: 14, 10, 4, 7, 7, 6, 8, 8, 5, 9. They have made the playoffs once in ten years. That's so hard to do! Like, SO FREAKIN HARD! There are a lot of playoff spots in the NWSL!

I had the Dash a semi-respectable --if still pretty dang mediocre-- ninth in my preseason prediction rankings, mostly because I thought they had stronger, faster horses than they had shown under previous manager and human embodiment of parking the bus, Sam Laity. I figured that even if their league-best defense in 2023 was a bit of a mirage, activating the talent of Diana Ordonez, Barbra Olivieri, Maria Sanchez, and new signing Elin Rubensson would be good enough to keep the Dash comfortably mediocre so long as the defense didn't totally fall off a cliff.

Well, the defense absolutely did fall off a cliff. And the offense followed the defense off said cliff with a swiftness that would make a flock of lemmings proud. Sometimes, the answer to "what went wrong" is as simple as "this team is just really bad." I'll get into the details in just a minute but I don't think this is good. That's the Dash all the way down in the bottom right of the chart below, meaning Houston finished the season last in both cumulative npxG generated and xG against. For the chart-illiterate among us, this shows that the Dash created the fewest amount of good chances in the league and allowed the most. That's not good!

What's that you say? "xG is for nerds!" "Soccer isn't played on spreadsheets!" "Surely Jane Campbell is worth something!" Well....I guess? Kinda? Here is the same chart except with good old fashioned goals and goals against instead of xG. It didn't really change much: Houston scored the fewest goals and is tied with Angel City and Bay FC for 2nd most goals allowed.

How they Played:

Splitting the blame pie for what was objectively one of the worst seasons in NWSL history is a tad difficult, but I'll give it a shot. The season started off poorly, for one. New manager Fran Alonso attempted to copy-paste his hyper-aggressive Celtic 3-4-3/3-5-2 hybrid onto the Dash and got predictably torn to shreds by the athleticism of the NWSL's best, Houston conceding an astounding 15 goals over their first five matches. Alonso's personnel choices didn't help either: He played a clearly pissed-off Maria Sanchez on the left wing, but with the Dash consistently pinned back, Sanchez was really playing as a wing back. Diana Ordonez played underneath the front two for large stretches as a ten, preventing her from using her talents (attacking in the box, getting on the end of crosses) and emphasizing her weaknesses (creation, passing). With CB stalwarts Natalie Jacobs and Katie Lind unavailable to start the season, Canadian veteran six Sophie Schmidt was forced to play out of position as a fill-in CB as well. A real comedy of errors.

Ultimately, however, a lot of the blame comes down to lack of both smart investment and organizational structure. The Dash have the lowest talent baseline in the league: A league where --as we've covered throughout the season-- the gap between the haves and have nots is steadily increasing. The Dash were heavily reliant on a midfield consisting of the aging Schmidt, veteran NWSLer Yuki Nagasato, and Rubensson, who is a steady presence but not one that is going to elevate subpar talent around her. Up top, Ordonez is a forward that needs the type of midfield creation the Dash don't have. Houston hyped up a big summer signing, only for said signing to be 33 year old Swiss attacker Ramona Bachman, well past her best. On the wings, Houston leaned heavily on youngster Avery Patterson (who had a pretty good season all things considered) and veterans Michelle Alozie and Alyssa Chapman. Interim coach Ricky Clarke ditched the 3-back entirely mid-September, moving into a more traditional 4-2-3-1, which added a bit of stability --if not on-field success-- to the Dash, restoring Ordonez, Yuki, Alozie, and winger Barbra Olivieri to more familiar positions.

The silver lining to an otherwise dreadful season was the surprising addition of 20 year old Brazilian CB Tarciane from Brazilian club Corinthians. Now, the Dash didn't actually care to spend the astounding $485K it took to pry the youngster away from Brazil until they had the $500K from the Maria Sanchez sale safely in their bank account, but Tarciane has been one of the best defenders in the league full stop since joining in May. I'll admit to having been a tad skeptical about the outlay on Tarciane even after watching the gangly teen establish herself as Brazil's first choice CB, but it's safe to say that the investment is already paying off. Tarciane is one of the only CBs to (somewhat) successfully defend Orlando's Barbra Banda 1v1 and is a psychotic competitor with excellent ball skills, rare for NWSL CBs who tend to be more of the "do the defensive work and worry about the other stuff later" variety. She's not a perfect player -- she has a tendency to draw herself out of position, often stabs at the ball unnecessarily, and is no Naomi Girma temperament-wise-- but it's oh so rare to see a 21 year old CB with the physical and technical tools Tarciane already has. I'd put a good amount of money on her turning into one of the better CBs in the world over the course of the next few years.

Houston has very few players that are the foundation of a successful NWSL team. Tarciane is one. Newly signed teenage midfielder Zoe Matthews looks the part of another. Ordonez, perhaps. Rubensson, maybe. The Dash will have to focus on stability- They've managed to hold onto veterans Paige Nielsen and Schmidt through recent contract extensions, and still have the ever-present Jane Campbell in goal. They'll need to find a GM --they still don't have one despite firing Singer in July-- and likely bring in a new coach as well. It'll be a long build for the Dash, though one distinct advantage of flying under the radar is that they don't receive the same pressure as some of the league's marquee franchises from a fanbase that remains, sadly, smaller than it should be. It'll be an interesting offseason for Houston, who need both the aforementioned stability and a talent injection. The good news is that, in theory at least, things can only get better.

#13 Seattle Reign

Record: 6-5-13, 23 points

Preseason Prediction: 10th

Player of the Season: Ji So Yung

Season in a gif:

2024's "most painful week to week watch" award goes to the Seattle Reign. After a few years of hanging off the cliff by their fingernails, Laura Harvey's Reign side finally dropped into the Puget Sound waters, finishing 2nd to last and, if not for a three match late-August nine point burst, would have actually managed to win the spoon.

Seattle is (not for the first time) a team where I really should have trusted my gut and ranked them even lower in the preseason. Coming off a relatively fortunate 4th place finish in which they were just two points away from finishing 9th, the Reign somehow eked their way to a near Championship in 2023, losing to Gotham despite Rose Lavelle's brilliance in the fina;. Even with the now-New Jersey based USWNT duo of Lavelle and Emily Sonnett, the Reign never quite looked right in 2023. An anemic offense (4th worst in cumulative xG) was propped up by a typically sturdy Laura Harvey defense (2nd best in cumulative xGA). In 2024, the offense got even worse, dropping from 1.38 xG/90 in 2023 to 1.18 in 2024. The defense --unsurprisingly-- regressed as well, dropping from 1.14 xGA/90 to 1.33 in 2024. Add those together, and you get the 2024 Reign season from hell.

Seattle came into the season as perhaps the least talented (non-Houston division) roster in the NWSL. While a rudderless FO helmed by GM Lesle Gallimore awaited new ownership, the Reign did very little to address the gaps left by the departure of Lavelle, Sonnett, and CB Sam Hiatt; all of whom ended up at Gotham. In addition to the three players lost to Gotham Club legend Megan Rapinoe retired, and Angelina was shipped off to Orlando in a move which didn't draw much attention at the time, but quickly became one of the most consequential of the offseason. Welsh duo Angharad James and Lily Woodham were added to Seattle's marquee offseason signing Ji So-Yun, but the roster plan remained almost entirely unclear. Seattle supplemented an increasingly aging core (Ji is 33, Jess Fishlock is 37, and Lauren Barnes is 35) with teeny boppers and U-17 internationals Emeri Adames, Ainsley McCammon, and Jordyn Bugg. The rest of the roster's key pieces --namely strikers Jordyn Huitema and Bethany Balcer, and defenders Alana Cook and Sofia Huerta-- were good players, but lacking any true star power. And, despite Ji's best efforts, they played like it, hovering around the bottom of the table throughout the entire 2024 season.

How they Played:

I wondered in my Reign preview whether Harvey would switch from her trusty 4-2-3-1 to a diamond to mitigate for the dearth of wingers (and by dearth, I mean literally zero) on the roster. Sure enough, opening night brought with it the narrowest of diamonds with Ji sitting in the hole behind Balcer and Huitema. The Reign sought to get almost all of their width from their fullbacks, with Woodham bombing up the left and Huerta doing the same on the right. While the diamond didn't last long before Harvey moved back to her 4-2-3-1, the Reign remained one of the slowest teams in the league. They didn't press (their PPDA, or passes per defensive action, was third lowest in the league) and their speed of build up was slower than any team outside Sean Nahas' methodical North Carolina Courage side. Through August, the Reign averaged the second fewest passes per attacking sequence and the fewest direct buildups in the entire league. Even worse, it wasn't as though Seattle wasn't trying to play forward- The attempted BY FAR the most long passes in the league, but completed the 2nd lowest percentage of these passes of any other NWSL side. In other words, everything was an absolute slog for Seattle.

By the end of the summer transfer window, the Reign had admitted they were done and cleaned house. Defender Alana Cook was shipped to KC to reunite with Vlatko Andonovski, Huerta requested and received a loan to French champions Lyon, and most surprisingly, fan favorite Balcer was traded to Louisville for holding midfielder Jaelin Howell. Seattle (kind of) addressed their wing shortage by bringing in aging Swiss international Ana-Maria Crnogorcevic and young Haitian winger Nerilia Mondesir. The Reign didn't end up making much of a run, but the team did look more balanced. With Huitema no longer in direct conflict for the nine with Balcer, holding midfielder Quinn finally healthy, and options at the wing, Seattle went on that three game win streak, putting themselves firmly in the playoff chase...but then went on to fail to score a goal in five straight matches, ending any illusion of a chance at the 8th spot.

Seattle have a ton of work to do, but the summer exodus did make things much more clear heading into 2025. While bringing in three U-17s was not necessarily conducive to success in 2024, Seattle will no doubt be encouraged by the performances of both Bugg and Adames in particular, both of whom played significant roles for the baby nats at the U-17 World Cup. Harvey didn't play Mondesir hardly at all for reasons that remain unclear, but the Haitian should be considered a key piece going forward. The Howell trade was arguably Gallimore's best move if the FSU product can stay healthy, injecting a talent infusion into an aging and talent-deficient midfield. I'd be shocked --barring an incredibly active offseason-- if Seattle is any better than on the playoff border in 2025, simply because there's still just not enough talent on the roster. Gallimore has a big job ahead of her if the Reign are going to return to competitiveness any time soon.

#12 Angel City

Record: 7-6-13, 24 points

Preseason Prediction: 11th

Player of the Season: Alyssa Thompson

Season in a gif:

With no small amount of schadenfreude, this one was not hard to predict. Angel City's third from bottom performance in 2024 was the culmination of every issue the club has had since coming into the league three years ago.

After now-permanent manager Becki Tweed (or, as I like to call her, "the new coach bump personified") took the Angels to a fifth place finish and first playoff spot in the franchise's fledgling history in 2023, the Angel City FO did, well, absolutely nothing to build off the good vibes emanating from BMO stadium's pink side. It became clear before the season even started that the conflicts among their many celebrity investors had resulted in financial issues that halted the potential for any major additions.

An early season rash of injuries didn't help either. Winger Jun Endo, already out with an ACL, was joined by new signing Rocky Rodriguez, club captain Ali Riley, and talented LB MA Vignola on the sidelines, with CB stalwart Sarah Gorden also spending time out of the lineup. Young attacking midfielder Kennedy Fuller was a spark early, but faded as the season went on as Tweed, probably smartly, eased the load on her talented teen. After salary dumping fan favorite Paige Nielsen to Houston and Amandine Henry to Utah of all places, Angel City's spine quickly deteriorated- A struggling midfield anchored by Madison Hammond, Meggie Dougherty-Howard, and Rodriguez failed to generate much of anything, and was much too slow to prevent other teams from carving through them. Without Vignola, Tweed relied heavily on Gisele Thompson and Jaz Spencer at FBs, with a rotating cast of CBs including Lily Nabet and do-it-all rookie 4th round pick Madison Curry standing in next to Gorden at CB.

How they played:

The trademark of Tweed's 2023 Angel City side was their vicious 4-2-4 press. With Vignola and young Alyssa Thompson on the left side, and Claire Emslie and Jaz Spencer on the right, the LA side wrecked havoc on teams attempting to play out from the back. Tweed's 2024 side.....did not do that. A lot of it was probably due to the loss of Vignola. Gisele Thompson was excellent, particularly early on, but she is much more of a possession LB than the high-pressing vertical LB Vignola was in 2023. As a result, LA's PPDA dropped from near the top of the league in 2023 to middle of the pack in 2024, as did their chances created via cross. Angel City didn't really have an identity: Their midfield was frequently out-talented and found themselves unable to keep the ball, meaning that a majority of their attacks went through Alyssa Thompson and Emslie. That makes sense on paper: The two wingers are Angel City's most explosive players, and most likely to generate dangerous chances. Practically, however, it meant that teams could focus most of their defensive resources doubling Emslie and Thompson on the wing.

The problem was that Thompson, who Angel City really needed to take a leap, struggled immensely through the first half of the season, failing to score until late August. Once Thompson did finally find the net, she turned absolutely scorching hot during the month of September in which she scored in four out of five matches and compiled all five of her goals and two assists. Unfortunately, both she and Angel City tailed off in October and LA dropped all the way to 12th as a result. Thompson's main issue through her first two seasons has been inconsistency and confidence, particularly with her decision-making in the final third. When she sees one go in the net, she's an entirely different player: Her passes get sharper, her decisions are quicker, and her runs more assertive. She's always, whether she is collecting goals and assists or not, an absolutely explosive winger who consistently gets herself into dangerous positions in the opponent's box: As shown in the chart below, her progressive carry rate places her in elite company amongst a slew of MVP candidates. It's her chance creation (shown her by xG+xAG /90) that lags behind that top group. If she can shift herself further to the right on that chart, don't be surprised if she's an MVP candidate next season. But that's a big if.

It is also important to keep in mind that Thompson is only 20.....the same age Sophia Smith when she entered the league as a rookie in Portland in 2020. Here is Smith's second year in 2021 compared against Thompson's second year in 2024. As a more natural winger, Thompson doesn't have the nose for goal Smith does (and probably never will), but she's already a better creator. If Thompson can add some more goals to her game, watch out.

Angel City, like most of our bottom group, have some work to do going into 2025. They made a significant summer signing by bringing in former Manchester United captain and England international Katie Zelem to fill the Henry-sized hole at the six, but they still lack locked-in starters at both the eight and the 10. As anyone who read my weekly recaps will know, Messiah Bright, who looked poised to be one of the league's best young strikers as a rookie in Orlando, barely saw the field for Angel City in 2024, Tweed consistently preferring aging vet Sydney Leroux. With Leroux receiving a new three year deal just weeks ago, it's likely Bright's lack of minutes will continue....but Angel City isn't going to go very far without getting more explosive at the nine. Defensively, a healthy Angel City looks solid: Curry was the type of massive late round hit you rarely see from rookie defenders, Sarah Gorden remains imperious, and Gisele Thompson will only get better and will likely be shifted to RB with Vignola back in the picture. While those four provide a solid backline, there is a chasm between the starters and the backups, with Nabet being one of the worst backup CB options in the league, Megan Reid being no better than league average, and Riley coming off injury at 37 years old.

Oh, and did I mention that ACFC got deducted three points for compensating their players outside of the CBA? And that their GM has been banned from making any moves for the rest of the calendar year? Yeah, things are far from sunny in LA!

#11: Utah Royals

Record: 7-4-15, 25 points

Preseason Prediction: 2nd

Player of the Season: Ally Sentnor

Season in a gif:

Utah have had, truly, one of the strangest, most Jekyll and Hyde expansion seasons I can remember. Let's start by looking at their splits pre and post Olympic break:

Before: 2-3-11, 8 points, 0.5 points per game

After: 5-1-4, 19 points, 1.9 points per game

That's crazy! So what happened? Well, to start with, the Utah organization openly sabotaged rookie coach Amy Rodriguez with quite literally the worst opening day roster in NWSL history. I'm serious. It was that bad. From my preview:

" I don't know if the Royals' FO made the choice not to build through the international market or whether internationals really didn't want to come to Utah, but this roster is like reading through a decade of semi-successful NWSL vets, ex-BYU stars and Utah natives, and career backups whose previous club could not afford to keep them due to either the expansion draft or lost them via free agency."

It got ugly fast. After nabbing the most snatch-and-grab win of all time in their second match against the Courage, Utah lost nine of ten, culminating in poor Rodriguez losing her job at the end of June, to be replaced by assistant manager and Belgian Jimmy Conrad (for my 2000s USMNT/MLS heads out there), Jimmy Conraets. Here's where the analysis of Rodriguez's tenure gets a little tricky: Utah was undeniably better under Conraets. They were more creative in attack, more sturdy in defense, and compact in midfield. Tactically, it looked different, and in a good way.

While Conraets --who eventually earned the permanent job, becoming the latest in a long line of interim NWSL coaches to be awarded with the position-- deserves some amount of credit for Utah's turnaround, the reality is that Utah's FO royally screwed Rodriguez. After saddling her with what I must once again describe as the single worst NWSL roster of the modern era, they opened their checkbooks to add a number of accomplished international talents after firing Rodriguez. While the first of these (21 year old Spanish CB/CDM Ana Tejada) arrived in late May, the core of Utah's midseason re-tool showed up in Sandy after the Olympic break. In prolific Japanese international winger Mina Tanaka, Canadian international winger Cloe Lacasse, and Spanish veteran midfielder Claudia Zornoza, Utah completely re-shaped both their attack and midfield. The upgrade Tanaka and Lacasse (who led the entire team in assists before sadly tearing her ACL late in the season) on Brecken Mozingo and Paige Monaghan cannot be exaggerated. The same goes for Zornoz when compared to Dana Foederer and Agnes Nyberg. I'm happy Utah awoke from their slumber, but goodness gracious, would I be absolutely steaming if I was Rodriguez.

How they played:

I'm going to throw out the first four months and focus on how Conraets set his team up after the summer transfer window. Here is what they look like at their best (thanks to Andre Carlisle https://btvc.beehiiv.com/p/nwsl-week-24-xg-race-charts-pass-networks-2024 for the graphic):

Conraets' solution to Utah's early season woes was a very straight-forward 4-2-3-1. The Spanish combo of youngster Ana Tejada and veteran Claudia Zornoza formed the double pivot at the base of Utah's late season surge. Tejada, a more natural CB, provided the brawn with Zornoza providing the technical aspects......but also no small amount of physicality herself. With those two at the base, Utah suffocated a number of teams, most notably Seattle and Houston. Fullbacks Madison Pogarch and Zoe Burns (who had a real impressive personal late season burst of her own) overlapped Tanaka and Lacasse, both of whom are natural inverted wingers. Sentnor ostensibly played as the 10, but rotated consistently with whoever was playing at the nine on the day. The double pivot allowed Utah's attackers much more freedom to move forward, and Tanaka's creative use of space and ability to drop deep and find pockets made the Royals attack that much more dangerous.

Even before the new additions arrived, it become clear with one blast of her left foot on an early April Saturday against the Courage that rookie number one overall pick Ally Sentnor would become Utah's player of the season. The 20 year old Sentnor, a ten in theory who really plays more as a withdrawn striker, led the team in goal contributions with four goals and three assists during the regular season, adding three goals and an assist during the summer cup. We shall see if ROTY frontrunner Croix Bethune's midseason injury opens the door for Sentnor to win the award, but the most important thing is that Utah hit on their first ever draft pick, and has an exciting future nationa teamer to build around going forward.

With Lacasse likely out to start next season and both Zornoza and Tanaka aging, Utah will have to find a way to maintain their strong form going into 2025. The FO, once they woke up from what I can only assume was a deep coma from January through May, have done an impressive job to attract experienced internationals to Utah, something I worried would be a near impossible barrier to overcome in making the Royals competitive. Now, however, comes the hard part: The roster as currently constructed is better than it was in March, but still not one likely to make the playoffs in 2025. First and foremost, they need a striker. Former Thorn Hannah Betfort did a yeoman's job in the press and is nothing if not a hard worker, but isn't near the quality of a starting NWSL striker. In defense, it will be interesting to see whether the duo of Kate Del Fava and Kaileigh Riehl --both of whom were impressive throughout the year-- will remain Conraet's first choice pairing, or whether the defense will be reinforced in the offseason. One thing Utah cannot do is stand pat and assume that the late season run will yield more of the same in 2025. The NWSL tide is constantly rising, and if you take a break from swimming, you'll eventually drown.

#10 San Diego Wave

Record: 6-7-13, 25 points

Preseason Prediction: 2nd

Player of the Season: Naomi Girma

Season in a gif:

Does San Diego have a real argument for having the most catastrophically bad season relative to expectation in NWSL history? I think they do! Here's the argument:

The Wave came into the season fresh off winning the shield in just their second year of existence with a roster built around the best defender in the world in Naomi Girma and USWNT veteran Abby Dahlkemper, an aging but still capable Alex Morgan, and the prodigious talent of teen attacker Jaedyn Shaw. In manager Casey Stoney, they had a coach whose defensive-minded tactical philosophy mixed with the Wave's wealth of defensive talent promised to once again yield the NWSL's best defense, keeping the Wave's floor relatively high, even if their offense failed to perform. So what happened?

Here is the last sentence of my preseason Wave preview: "In the end, the Wave's attacking issues may not matter. Stoney's teams are always sturdy, and in Girma they have the best CB in the league, and one of the best in the world. We may not enjoy watching the Wave, but their floor remains high so long as Morgan, Shaw, and Girma are in the 11."

Alas for the San Diegans among us, I could not have been more wrong. San Diego's last day poaching of the shield from the collapsing Thorns masked some seriously worrying underlying offensive metrics in 2023. The Wave's cumulative xG in 2023 was just 28.8, good for 8th of the 2023 NWSL's 12 teams. That's dreadful! But here's the twist: The xG/90 of the 2024 Wave is virtually identical (1.35) to that of the 2023 Wave (1.31). In fact, the offensive output actually improved on the 2023 numbers if you just look at the xG metrics. But, as we know, xG isn't actually what goes on the scoreboard, and the Wave had a historically bad season-long xG underperformance in 2024. San Diego underperformed their xG by an astonishing 0.51 goals per game. That means that throughout the entire season, they underperformed their statistical expectation by over EIGHT goals. That's a real killer for a team that already doesn't generate a ton of chances relative to the rest of the league to begin with.

Well, I kinda take that back. The real killer was was, shockingly enough, an absurd defensive regression. Remember what I said about how the Reign's poor underlying offensive metrics were propped up by an almost unsustainably sturdy defense? Well, the same was true for SD. Whereas the xG/90 numbers in 2023 and 2024 were almost the exact same, the defense fell off a cliff. San Diego's xGD/90 in 2023 was +0.28. Their xGD/90 in 2024 was -0.18. That means that their defense allowed nearly 0.5 expected goals more per match than they did in 2023! The Wave actually allowed four fewer goals than their xGA would indicate (34 vs. 38) balancing out some of the offensive underperformance, or the season could have gone even worse. As it was, San Diego going from having the best defense in the league in 2023 to the fourth worst in 2024 was more than their anemic offense could support, and when that happens....well, the waves get too big and the ship sinks. And that was really the on-field story of the 2024 Wave.

Alright. That's what happened on the field. Off the field, things were even worse. Let's do a little rundown:

• The Wave's putrid start to the season results in Casey Stoney getting canned in June to much outrage from the woso community.

• On July 3rd, former Wave employee Brittany Alvarado accuses Wave President Jill Ellis and the Wave organization of fostering an abusive work environment. Ellis, unable to help herself, counter-sued Alvarado.

• After consulting USMNT legend Landon Donovan on who the Wave's next coach should be, Donovan suggested himself, and Ellis said "alright" and hired him. It did not go well.

I'll defend Ellis in one and only one way: The outcry from the woso community when Stoney --an exceptionally popular former player and outspoken advocate for players-- was fired had nothing to do with her coaching ability. I just went over how the 2023 Wave were a bit of a paper tiger propped up by an unsustainably elite defense. When the defense started conceding and the offense didn't improve....well, I'm guessing Ellis saw the metrics and didn't like what she saw. There's a perfectly legitimate line of reasoning that Stoney, as a popular shield-winning coach deserved a full season before getting canned, but no one has ever called Jill Ellis "patient," or "a good person," or "skilled with people." And that was that for Stoney.

Here's where I will not defend Ellis: If she did notice the poor 2023 metrics, she did absolutely nothing to address the state of the Wave roster going into 2024. San Diego's only real additions going into the season were a pair of rookies in Mya Jones and Kennedy Wesley, a young FB in Hanna Lundkvist and, and journey woman midfielder Savannah McKaskill from their SoCal neighbors to the North. The Wave's midfield and offense was a house of cards waiting to collapse. When Morgan finally took the drop off the cliff and Stoney couldn't get the best of out Shaw --who also spent a good portion of the season injured-- the Wave didn't have any back up. The signing they did bring in early, Houston winger Maria Sanchez, didn't really produce. By the time Ellis brought in French flairmaster and personal favorite of this writer Delphine Cascarino, and Cascarino's Lyon teammate and LB-cum-winger Perle Merroni, it was too late for the Wave: Morgan had retired and the Wave were both floundering near the bottom of the NWSL table and about to get group-stage'd out of the WCCL by Mexican side Club America.

How they Played:

Pretty much how we all thought they would, to be perfectly honest. Stoney had them playing an absolutely brutal 4-2-3-1 with poor Shaw stuck on the wing before Stoney was let go, and it didn't really change under Donovan. The Wave's midfield continued to be the main issue, and confoundingly, not one Ellis improved over the course of the summer transfer window. San Diego relied heavily on long balls to their wingers, ranking fourth in the league in long ball passes down the wings. They simply did not get enough out of their midfield, though a large part of this was simply Shaw not being healthy for enough of the season. Perhaps this is a more a reflection of how poor the season went for the rest of the Wave's midfield, but a clearly not at 100% Shaw, who only started 12 league matches all of 2024, still had comfortably the best per 90 creation metrics on the team and near the best in the entire league.

The Wave are a lopsidedly-built team going into the 2024 offseason, but the good news is that they are one of the teams that is really just a good coach and a few additions away from being really good again. In Girma, they still have the world's best defender under contract for two more years. In Shaw, they have a 19 year old superstar who can play multiple positions. In Sanchez and Cascarino, they have a winger duo that rank near the top of the NWSL on pure talent. They have three big holes to fill: At the nine, they have addressed the Alex Morgan-sized hole nearly immediately by making currently-injured but prolific Texas striker Trinity Byars the first non-draft college signee, but still have gaps at the six, where they've relied heavily on veteran Emily Von Egmond; and at the eight, where poor Savannah McKaskill has --not entirely deservingly-- received a brunt of the blame for the midfield dysfunction. Perhaps most importantly, they need to find a non-Landon Donovan manager. If they check 3/4 of those off in the offseason, I think they'll be fine. The off-field stuff? That might be a different story.