A Five Stripe Final Mega-playoff Mailbag

3654 words to help you kill time until kickoff

Anyone nervous yet? Nervous about how not nervous they are? Look, yeah, yeah, house money and all that, but you should probably be nervous. The universe has gazed upon Atlanta United and smiled. There’s no one in in the East to be afraid of now that Atlanta has pulled off the biggest “upset” (their words not mine) in MLS history and now that the greater New York metro area went ahead and took out the entire state of Ohio. Atlanta is two winnable games away from a not-quite-as-winnable but still MLS Cup. 

Hopefully, you’re nervous now. Because our entire product this week is about helping you work off that nervous energy. And we’re going to start with one of my favorite ways to destress: Cracking open a nice cold mailbag. 

And guess what we’re going to answer every question y’all asked. Every. Single. One. 

How many?

Which would you say is statistically a heavier lift?

A) Beating Montréal on the road and Miami two of three, one of which was in Miami.

B) Beating Orlando on the road, one of Red Bulls/NYCFC on the road, and one of LAFC/Sounders/Galaxy/Loons on the road. 

In other words, are we “over the hump”? 

- Cinco Rayas

It’s important to remember that the playoffs are designed for Atlanta to fail. That’s how it should be. They’re the ninth seed. Teams that aren’t the ninth seed deserve advantages for not being the ninth seed. That’s why Atlanta had to recover from Decision Day on a Saturday to get to Montréal on a Tuesday. That’s why Atlanta had to recover from that to play Inter Miami on Friday. They’re supposed to go on the road and lose those games. 

Obviously, they survived against Montréal. They didn’t survive on Friday in Miami. They were down 1-0 on purpose. Overcoming that against a flawed but still Messi-having side is as impressive as it gets. Everything from here on out is technically easier. 

That being said, none of it is easy. Soccer is hard. MLS is harder. Road games in MLS are the hardest. Winning two straight against two Eastern Conference teams that also realize how close they are to MLS Cup is going to be extremely difficult. Winning MLS Cup all the way across the country against a good to great team like the LAs or Seattle is going to be damn near impossible. That’s just how it works in this league. 

For Atlanta, as the nine-seed, they haven’t cleared the hump. The hump is just continuing to rise at varying degrees of steepness. The steepest part may be over. But that doesn’t mean Sisyphus has gotten this rock to the top of the mountain.

Atlanta United has won a playoff series in only 3/8 seasons - 2018, 2019, and 2024! (Lol) 

With that said, where would you rank the 2024 season among the years where we made the playoffs? Strictly by end of season outcome, it’s the 3rd best season in club history! Adding that if you want to get real technical, we’ve won more playoff games in 2024 than 2019 🤔 

- Nick

All good points! But it’s hard to be revisionist and say that anyone was having fun up until the very last day of the season. We were all sitting around waiting for death. Personally, we had all our offseason content planned and ready to go. We were not prepared for this. Even still, I’m not sure we’ve fully wrapped our heads around the fact that Atlanta is two games from MLS Cup. 

So, yeah, as fun as this is, I’m not sure this playoff run cancels out whatever the hell was going on from March to October enough to say that this is better than other years where this team has the playoffs. 

Of course, the caveat here is that a number of other seasons where Atlanta has made the playoffs have also brought their own brand of misery. So, 2024 has a fighting chance here. Yay?

Just for fun, let’s walk this exercise out and rank Atlanta United seasons by Fun Factor ®. 

8. 2020 - 0.96 points per game, 23rd in MLS, No playoffs

Pandemics. J.J. Williams. Josef’s ACL. Stephen Glass. Things of that nature.

7. 2022 - 1.18 points per game, 23rd in MLS, No playoffs

If you didn’t tear your Achilles this season, congrats, you were one of the lucky ones.

6. 2021 - 1.50 points per game, ninth in MLS, Round One loss

The stingiest team in Atlanta United history (45 goals scored, 37 allowed) gave us and then mercifully took the Gabriel Heinze era away, gave us our intro to Rob, then brought on Gonzalo Pineda for the stretch run. They put up points but they were never a true threat to do anything in the playoffs. Ezequiel Barco might have been this team’s best player and Ezequiel Barco was infuriating. Add in the post-pandemic(ish) crowds still getting back in the stadium and things were just generally meh.

5. 2024 - 1.18 points per game, 20th in MLS, ???

This team will be remembered incredibly fondly no matter what happens from here on out. They earned that with the Miami win. 

That isn’t going to erase the previous nine months from memory. God, remember the Santos Laguna game? The Montréal loss at home? FEA and all that, but, damn, this team had us all on edge and then we jumped off the edge head-first into apathy. 

Now, if they make it to MLS Cup…

I’m willing to revisit this later is all I’ll say.

4. 2023 - 1.50 points per game, 10th in MLS, Round One loss

The more fun, scoresy version of the 2021 team. This group scored 66 goals while also being liable to give up the softest goal you’ve ever seen at a moment’s notice. You were liable to see an incredible attacking moment and a horrific defensive moment at a moment’s notice. Frustrating? Definitely. Entertaining? 1000%. 

They were pretty good by the end of things too. There were still some serious issues at the start of the year, but the summer window turned things around. Don’t forget, they *thumped* a Crew team that ended up being an order of magnitude better than this Miami team. There’s a reason we were all so optimistic heading into this season.

3. 2019 - 1.71 points per game, 3rd in MLS, Conference Final loss

Frank…to be frank…Frank tried to keep a Ferrari parked in the garage for most of the year in favor of a Toyota Corolla. It got the job done at times but, damn man, lookit the bright red shiny thing you could have been driving this whole time. 

This group got fun though once the players successfully pulled off what we’ll call a “light mutiny.” They started playing open and exciting soccer again (while actively fighting with the manager) and ended up coming a Nick DeLeoning away from MLS Cup. Good soccer team. Goofy manager who limited one of the best rosters in MLS history. Total bummer of an end result. 

2. 2017 - 1.62 points per game, 4th in MLS, Round One loss

Perfect start. I don’t even care that Adam Jahn ended the season.

1. 2018 - 2.03 points per game, 2nd in MLS, MLS Cup winners

I got champagne on me.

As someone whose job involves watching lots of MLS, do you have any observations about why it seems like Atlanta is the only team to figure out the secret to beating Miami? I would think there are plenty of other “pragmatic” teams around the league. You’ve shown that Miami has dramatically overperformed their underlying numbers and matches up poorly with Atlanta, but I’m wondering if Atlanta’s series victory will make Miami’s vulnerabilities a little clearer to everyone else. 

- dadjokeloading

It’s a good question. Part of it might be that Atlanta existed in a weird purgatorial space where they were more talented than the average team in attack but didn’t have the confidence to try and play like it. Basically, they had the ability to punish Miami while sitting deeper than an ultra-confident team like Columbus would. That created more transition opportunities for players who had the ability to capitalize on them against a straight-up atrocious transition defense team.  

Other than that, it seems like Miami’s luck just finally ran out in this series. Other teams did a lot well against Miami but didn’t catch the breaks. Maybe a few teams will sit a little deeper against the Herons from here on out, but most teams were already retreating a bit, limiting chances and getting opportunities. It might be that Atlanta just happened to be the one team to have the universe tilt their way against Miami this year. Sample sizes are weird. 

Of the remaining teams (excluding ATL), who scares you the most in the East? what about the West? 

- Good Luck, CurtIn, xBald

By my highly advanced Power Ratings—you know, the ones that had been screaming all year that Miami were frauds and that Atlanta were actually pretty ok, the best team remaining in the East is…the New York Red Bulls. 

In fact, they’re my highest-rated team that isn’t LAFC. 

It’s weird. They clearly struggled over the second half of the season. And that’s putting it lightly. They were on 1.06 points per game in the second half and 0.67 points per game after Leagues Cup. But throughout that run, their underlying numbers told a much different story. According to ASA’s expected points metric, only Portland, Columbus and Orlando were better over the second half of the season. When they beat the Crew, it may not have been quite as big a surprise as it seemed on the surface. 

The big difference for them now is that they have DP attacker Emil Forsberg back in the lineup. Their issues in the second half directly coincided with his absence due to injury. Now that he’s back and operating at a high level again, they’re extremely scary.

Other than the fact that their Red Bulls and they’re cursed. The scariest Eastern team left is Orlando.  Although you could make a decent argument for home-team NYCFC. Home-team NYCFC is one of the best teams in the league too. If we’re talking overall, the scariest team by far is LAFC. 

Something to note about LAFC and Red Bulls is that they’ll play against the ball in a way Orlando and NYCFC won’t. Atlanta would much rather see NYCFC and a team that’s not LAFC in the next two rounds in my opinion. 

It doesn't seem like we have an official anthem of the 2024 playoff run yet.  What should it be?

- machine_epsilon