Nine days ago this site published a claim it could be wrong about. Nashville SC had won 49 points from 21 games against the 29.7 its chances projected, the largest gap per game in the record, and the piece argued it would not survive the run in. Every club that had carried a gap that size had given it back.
One match has been played since. Nashville beat Cincinnati 4-0 at home on August 30.
The gap is now 20.77 points. It was 19.31. Expected points is the total a club would carry if every chance it took and allowed finished at the league average rate, so a growing gap means the results moved further from the play rather than closer to it.
Nothing about that settles the question. It also does not support it.
Where it actually stands
Through 22 matches Nashville has 52 points against 31.2 expected. First in MLS on points, 14th of 30 on expected points, which is the same rank the August piece reported. The next largest gap in the league belongs to Houston at 9.39, so Nashville’s is more than double any other club’s.
The figure the original piece led with was goal difference above expectation per game. It has gone from plus 1.186 to plus 1.303.
One point sits well outside the rest
346 MLS team seasons since 2013. The mean is minus 0.0065 a match, which is what it should be, because these differences cancel across a league. Nashville 2026 is plus 1.303. Second is Inter Miami 2024 at plus 0.817. Source: American Soccer Analysis, pulled 2026-09-03.
The chart carries its own caveat and that is why it plots matches played on the horizontal. Nashville has played 22. Most of the seasons it is being measured against ran to 34 or more. A partial season has more room to sit at an extreme, and the honest reading is that Nashville is a long way clear of everything but has not yet been asked the question the others were.
Against the 290 team seasons of 30 matches or more, it would still rank first.
What would settle this
Twelve matches, starting Friday at New York City FC and ending November 7 at Cincinnati.
If the original claim is right, the gap narrows over those twelve because the finishing and the shot stopping regress toward what the chances say. If it is wrong, Nashville arrives in the playoffs having sustained something no club in the record has sustained.
One match is not evidence in either direction. Calling this wrong after nine days would be the same failure as calling it proven. The claim was about a run in and a winter, and the run in has barely started.
What I would still say
The argument was never that Nashville is bad. It is first in MLS and the goals prevented are the work of a keeper and a defence. The argument was that the gap is the least repeatable thing a club can own, and across 313 consecutive season pairs since 2013 the correlation between one season’s gap and the next is 0.151, which is close to nothing.
That number has not changed. What has changed is that Nashville is now further from its expected total than any club in the record, with twelve matches to hold it.
I’m a fan of these teams, not a neutral observer.
Sources: American Soccer Analysis, pulled September 3, 2026. The figures and the 346 team season comparison come from pipeline/asa_mls.py.