Nashville SC is first in MLS. Forty nine points from 21 games, fifteen wins, nine clean sheets, and a goal difference of plus 26 that is second in the league. Brian Schwake has conceded 17 goals against 24.77 expected on the shots he faced, which is 7.77 goals prevented and second among the 32 keepers with 900 minutes. His ratio of 0.686 goals allowed per goal expected is the best in the league. None of that is in question and none of it needs a qualifier.
The question is whether it holds.
Expected goals put Nashville’s season at 29.7 points, which is 14th of 30. Expected goals estimate how many a team should score and concede from the quality of the chances taken and allowed, so expected points is the record a team would carry if every chance finished at its average rate.
Nashville has 19.31 points more than that estimate. The next largest gap in MLS belongs to Houston at 9.40.
One pair does not match
Seven of the top eight sit within 9.4 points of their expected total. Nashville is 19.31 clear of theirs.
This is not three lucky nights
Aggregates hide shape, so here is the shape. 18 of Nashville’s 21 games carry a positive gap between the result and what the chances in that game projected. The median game sits at plus 0.93 goals of difference above expectation and the mean sits at plus 1.19. The three biggest games account for 38 percent of the total, which is a mild skew from 14 percent of the matches rather than a spike.
Four results carry it furthest. Nashville beat Charlotte 2-1 while generating 0.53 expected goals against Charlotte’s 2.63. They beat LAFC 3-2 on 0.68 against 2.54. They beat Inter Miami 4-1 on 2.20 against 2.71. They beat the Red Bulls 1-0 on 1.06 against 2.30.
Eight of the fifteen wins came by a single goal.
Both ends of the field, and no single player
The 43 goals came from 30.89 expected, which is 12.11 more than the chances projected. That is spread across the roster rather than concentrated. Thirteen of the nineteen players with 450 minutes or more are finishing above expectation. Sam Surridge is plus 2.49, Hany Mukhtar plus 2.26, Warren Madrigal plus 1.83.
The 17 goals conceded came against 29.80 expected, 12.80 fewer than the chances allowed projected.
One limit belongs here rather than in a footnote. Team expected goals against counts every shot, including the ones blocked before they arrive. A keeper’s expected goals counts what actually reached him. The two numbers describe different samples and they do not subtract into a clean split between Schwake and the eleven in front of him.
What would have to be true
For 49 points to describe this team rather than this run, the finishing and the shot stopping have to be a repeatable property of the roster.
Across 313 consecutive season pairs since 2013, the correlation between a club’s gap in one season and its gap the next is 0.151. A correlation of 1.0 would mean a club carries the whole thing forward and 0.0 would mean the next season is unrelated to the last one. At 0.151 almost nothing survives the offseason.
Twelve clubs have run a gap of plus 0.50 goals per game or better. The following season those same twelve averaged plus 0.109 against the plus 0.624 they posted the year they did it. Every one of the ten largest declined. Atlanta United went from plus 0.721 in 2017 to minus 0.108 in 2018. Toronto went from plus 0.650 to minus 0.225 over the same two years.
Nashville’s plus 1.186 per game is the largest in all 346 MLS team seasons since 2013. Inter Miami’s 2024 season is second at plus 0.817, and Miami needed 37 games to build a total Nashville has reached in 21.
So the horizon is short and it is specific. Nashville has roughly thirteen matches to lift the chance quality up toward the results, because the alternative is arriving in a knockout round as a one goal team whose expected goal difference is plus 1.09. Every club that has tried to carry a gap this size across a winter has failed to carry it. The playoffs are a shorter test than a winter, which is the strongest argument in Nashville’s favor and it is an argument about variance rather than about the roster.
I’m a fan of these teams, not a neutral observer. First in the league is first in the league, and I would take these 49 points over a better expected goal difference and 35. The number that decides October is the one they have not moved yet.