the nerds® present: the 2024 nwsl season awards

The 2024 NWSL season is a wrap and everyone is starting to turn their attention to 2025, but me and the nerds are not. A completed season of twenty-six games means we finally have substantive and complete sets of data to parse through. So what better way to do so than by handing out The Nerd Awards. Yes yes we already know the MVP plus Rookie, Midfielder, Defender and Goalkeeper of the year, but the nerds have yet to weigh-in—and we have hashtag data.

We’re going to go by position group by position group to identify top performers, largely through StatsBomb’s On Ball Value (OBV) metric. but we’re going to go deeper, as overall OBV is split and added up among multiple categories: Pass, Shot, Defensive Action and Dribble & Carry. But we’re also going to have a little bit of fun, including finding out who was the most dribbliest player in the NWSL, and xDawg Terror of the Year. It’s the nerd awards, let’s get to em.

One reason I love doing this is because we can identify the value of a particular skillset. Sam Staab is a terrific center back whose callup to the USWNT came much later than it should have, and unfortunately she went down this season with a torn Achilles. However, while Staab is obvs no slouch defensively, I don’t think of her as having Naomi Girma-type clairvoyance and athleticism, or Tara McKeown’s bullishness in 1v1s, It doesn’t matter, Staab’s contributions through her passing were that damn important and impactful. She leads all center backs with a .37 overall OBV, and .25 of that is her passing. Outrageous.

Also please don’t sleep on Sarah Gorden’s .10 Dribble & Carry OBV. Several midfielders and wingers didn’t post a number that high, I’m talking players like Marta, Narumi Miura, Olivia Moultrie, Rachel Hill and Debinha.

Much like Staab, Rodriguez gets top honors for her passing, and by an even larger percentage. Izzy’s overall OBV is a sky high .46, and .37 is her Pass OBV number. That’s absurd, and also makes it a little interesting why Vlatko went away from her in favor of the more defensive but much less effective in possession, Ellie Wheeler.

Fullback is one of those roles that can vary quite a bit system to system, or style to style. So the breakdown of who led each category is pretty interesting. Rodriguez’s passing is obvious, but the Dribble & Carry leaders have a lot of variety. Defensively, Chicago asked a lot of Tatumn Milazzo and she responded brilliantly, so it will be a bit interesting if they don’t manage to re-sign her.

(Gisele Thompson, .49 OBV, missed the 1200 minute cutoff by 200 minutes but her total shows she’s going to be a mf’n force.)

No real surprises here. Portland didn’t have a great season, and I still don’t trust Coach Kenough, but Sam Coffey has become one of the best DMs in the league and even a subpar season didn’t dull her ability to stand out.

Still, I gotta be honest, it was nowhere near her best and probably not a year that was great for her continued development at the position. Lest season she led the league in assists (8) while putting up outrageous defensive numbers. Some of the assists were just getting the ball to Soph, but not all. Four were open play passes into the box scored by Natalia Kuikka, Hina Sugita, and two by Morgan Weaver.

That Sam Coffey wasn’t around this season, and in fact only had three open play passes into the box that even led to shots. A lot of this is the way that team was constructed, and a midfield that is full of similar, rather than complementary, pieces. Shoutout to Coffey for still being effective enough with her defensive work, but she (and the USWNT) could really use Portland getting their shit together so she can get back to the trajectory she was on.

(Also, Claudia Zornoza missed the minutes cutoff, which I set to 1200, but at her pace she would have won this award. Something to keep in mind this offseason if Utah continue being serious.)

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