After Wednesday night's 2-1 win over Seattle Sounders FC, Austin FC interim head coach Davy Arnaud made a case for his team being able to make the playoffs.
Part of that was predicated on how the squad is learning and mastering his new style of play — and that involves the whole squad, given how heavily rotated Wednesday's winners were compared to other post-summer break lineups.
Part of that was also predicated on somewhat suspect math. While Arnaud was generally spot-on that a two points at home plus one point away match average would result in 51 points for a 34-match season — a number consistently above the playoff line — he also figured in two Leagues Cup wins and a draw into a post-break home record to inflate the sample size with results against mostly inferior (or at least unprepared) foes, and didn't fully account for the hole that his team is in trying to get to those thresholds.
Verde have played 20 matches in 2026 and have accumulated 20 points — that's an average of 1 PPG, with 1.55 PPG at home (0.45 PPG off the target pace), and a dismal 0.55 PPG away (which is also 0.45 PPG off the target pace, but with a less forgiving ratio).
Here are the mathematical realities facing Austin FC heading into its final 14 matches of 2026 — not counting the one to three Leagues Cup matches that present an opportunity for a title but also congest the immediately approaching portion of the schedule:
- 9th-place Portland is on 1.35 PPG and 10th-place LA Galaxy are on 1.19 PPG. Extrapolating that out, the playoff line as it stands falls between 40.5 and 46 points. The easiest way to annually conceive the line is 45 points, but it actually varies from year to year.
- Ergo, the line in 2025 was 41, the line in 2024 was 47 (though Austin's 42 would have qualified in the East, with Verde supplanting Atlanta in that multiversal option), and 2023 was 44. This season is looking more like 2024, when the West teams had higher point totals in the just made/just missed spots than the East.
- There's a logjam of teams directly above Austin, with two teams on 24 and two teams on 25 below the playoff line. One of those teams, the dramatically plummeting Seattle, was seven points ahead of Verde at kickoff Wednesday and are now just four points ahead, so it's possible to chip away at the teams above Austin, but there are only so many matches involving teams below the playoff line. (And Portland's on 27, so to get to the playoffs, Verde need to do eight points better than Portland — or seven points while making up 15 goals worth of goal differential.)
So let's go ahead and predict that it takes 45 points to make it. Moisés and I will take you through our match-by-match predictions.
Saturday, Aug. 22: hosting Philadelphia Union
- 20 points (5W 10L 5D)
- Form in last five: WWWWL
Phil says: If you just look at the overall record, you might think that this is a gettable three points. But much of this record was assembled under Bradley Carnell before his firing in late May. They went from 1 W 10L 4D with him at the helm (and his uberdemanding style in operation) to 4W 0L 1D without him. That, plus the return of Kai Wagner (one of the best playmaking fullbacks in MLS) makes this Union way more dangerous. I think Austin heat and Verde vibes help the hosts, but not enough for a win.
- Draw, moving Verde up to 21 points
Moisés says: Austin's last home game for two weeks (before returning to Q2 against San Jose on Sept. 5, probably — more on that in a bit) has to be a statement win against a resurgent Philly. Austin now boasts Philadelphia's former head of Soccer Strategy, who knows a lot of these players very well (including the Sullivan brothers). Davy Arnaud and the players are not going to "punt" on any game, especially a home game.
- Win, moving Verde up to 23 points
