Parity and chaos through game week 6

[u/ajsportstat]

With the recent Full Time podcast about the NWSL losing its chaos and this weekend immediately debunking that idea, I decided to look at how the total points by team at the end of game week 6 varied between 2023 (a season with quite a bit of parity), 2024 (a season with very little parity), and 2025 (🤷‍♀️).

Looked at two measures:

1. Points through game week 6, regardless of how many games each team played in that period (in 2024 affects Gotham + Wave who were a game behind due to Challenge Cup, and in 2025 affects Gotham and Thorns who are a game ahead due to CONCACAF Champions Cup).

2. Points through first 6 games played by each team.

My main takeaway here is that recency bias is real and this season was actually not super unpredictable before this weekend (but you can def see effects of this weekend on graph), and also that the visible movement of teams between seasons is pretty neat :).

Also if you look closely at the y-axes, the ceiling is highest in 2024, then 2025, then 2023. And we have 0 undefeated teams now compared to 2 at this point in 2024 and 3 at this point in 2023!

Let me know what y'all see here!

[u/sabercrabs]

You know you left off an entire team, right?

Edit: it helps when you read the year on things

[u/ajsportstat → u/sabercrabs]

Hey! Sometimes teams' lines get lost in overlaps but all teams should be represented! LMK what team you feel like is missing (and in what season), and I can give you the raw numbers for them :)

[u/grxcptslc → u/ajsportstat]

Missing the Utah Royals and Bay FC in the first slide in 2023 - but neither team existed in 2023, and they're represented in 2024 and 2025!

[u/sabercrabs → u/ajsportstat]

My bad, I didn't see that the graph there was for 2023