Do momentum, other clichés have credibility in the NWSL playoffs?

Craig Mitchelldyer-Imagn Images

No fewer than three teams were slapped with the “peaking at the right time” phase as the National Women’s Soccer League’s regular season came to a close over the weekend.

There are a lot of sports axioms like this that quickly tumble into cliché once you hear them enough. Another good one is what I’ll call Win-One-For-The-Gipper Syndrome. Who doesn’t love a good sports movie narrative about rallying around a club legend and sending them into retirement with a trophy? Ali Krieger was a universally loved and respected veteran who had never won a club title, so when NJ/NY Gotham FC raised the trophy in San Diego last year — after three scrappy knockout games and an equally scrappy regular-season campaign — why not assume that the team’s use of Krieger as a motivational tactic was the primary reason for their victory?

The truth becomes more complicated once you start digging under the hood and consider the full history of the league. Some of these narratives have some unexpected, data-driven weight to them. Others are the stories we tell ourselves in order to live. So, let’s unpack a few and see if we can find some signal in the noise that will tell us something about the 2024 playoffs.