USL Season Previews & Projections
What to expect from the USL’s 2026 season – and from me
Preview Content!
It's opening weekend in the USL, and I’ve got more than 50,000 words of preview content to get you ready for it. Yes, there’s a real possibility that the USL Championship players will go on strike, but USL League One is hitting the ground running this Saturday come hell or high water.
To learn about all 25 clubs in the Championship, check out Backheeled for my leaguewide mega-preview. I’ve got key additions, key departures, tactical analysis, depth charts, and loose standings predictions for every team in the division:
John Morrissey
Likewise, you can find the USL League One version here:
John Morrissey
For a fourth consecutive year, I also contributed to the official previews hosted on the USL website, on invitation from the inimitable Nicholas Murray. He came up with must-read team capsules, and I added tactical summaries and lineup predictions. You can find the Eastern Conference, Western Conference, and League One versions at those links.
If you’re interested in an audio format, you’re also covered. We went team-by-team on This League! throughout the month of February, culminating in a “20 Questions” mega preview that aired last night. Check out the podcast feed here, or dive in on YouTube:
The USL Show will be covering all things League One tonight, and we’ve already gone deep on the Championship over the last two weeks. You can find the Eastern Conference breakdown here:
For those of you counting at home, that’s 775 minutes of audio over the last month – and I’m easily adding two hours to that tonight.
Projections
Every season, I provide the latest from my USL projection model ahead of opening day. As a quick summary, I’m essentially taking player-based performance predictions, summing those up at the team level, and then spitting out an expected points value. The error bars you’re seeing are tied out to retention rates – the more familiar your roster is, the less variable your outcome is going to be.
To start, here’s the Eastern Conference:
Next up, here’s the Western Conference:
And finally, we’ve got League One:
As always, these predictions will inevitably be hindered by late-breaking roster moves across the divisions. League One is particularly thorny; teams like Chattanooga and Madison are only half-formed, and a five-club expansion class also creates major unknowns.
There are design features innate to the model that drag certain roster-building strategies down. Westchester, for instance, has gone for a college-driven re-tool that's getting penalized by the numbers, which adjust for league of origin for non-USL additions. Say WSC overperforms? The weights will be different for 2027.
My subjective predictions don’t necessarily line up with the model. In the East, I'm low-ish on Hartford and high-ish on Detroit. In my mind, New Mexico is closer to the Players' Shield than a playoff miss. I like Westchester's chances to make a major improvement, and I think Chattanooga and Fort Wayne will be in contention for home playoff games.
Traditionally, the model nails about three-fourths of the postseason field. I have a sneaking suspicion that number will be lower in 2026. If you’ve read or listened to any of my work this preseason, you’ve probably gleaned that parity across the USL is higher than ever. Hopefully, that’ll lead to a season full of surprises and excitement.
Coverage Plans
So, how should you keep up with my work this year? First and foremost, make sure you’re subscribed to Backheeled. Every week, you’ll be getting:
- USL Championship Power Rankings, a team-by-team, all-encompassing analysis of the week that was.
- USL League One Recap, a column where I dive deep into two or three major headlines and then hit my big takeaway(s) for the rest of League One’s 17 clubs.
- Another feature column, which could be an interview, a breaking news piece, or a look at some other USL-wide topic.
For the low price of $5 a month, you’re getting well over 10,000 words each week – in addition to round-by-round US Open Cup takeaways and the rest of Backheeled’s unmatched coverage of American soccer. Moreover, we’ll also be live every Monday with episodes of This League! to recap the Championship weekend.
On The USL Show, we’ll be catching you up on everything from across the USL ecosystem – Championship results, League One matches, the Super League’s home stretch, and so much more. That’s live on Tuesday nights.
Last but not least, you’ve got this website. As you may be able to tell, I’ve got a lot of other commitments on my plate, and I’m still not sure what form the newsletter will take in 2026. There’ll be something in your inbox toward the end of every week, and I hope it’ll make you that much more invested in all things USL.
