July 24, 2026
By Charlie Hoppes

For eight teams, the clock has started on their playoff push, as they (and we) stare down the promise and challenges of the postseason. There are plenty of questions each team will try to answer this weekend. We are going to drill down on four of the biggest. 

Can Salt Lake avoid another slow start?

Despite the difference in records between 8-4 Seattle and 5-7 Salt Lake, these two teams have played as evenly as they can throughout the regular season. Both prior games between these two teams were decided by one goal, and both resulted in Cascades wins. Seattle’s strength is their ability to leverage favorable one-on-one matchups, which has resulted in their second home playoff game in the past three seasons. In fact, had Seattle knocked off, and also dispatched regional rival Oregon in the regular season finale, we might be talking about how Seattle could’ve challenged the Spiders for a first round bye in the West.

For their part, Salt Lake has been explosive in many of their wins, and frankly in many of their losses. Their five wins were by healthy margins: by nine, 17, and seven goals over the Steel, by 10 over Colorado, as well as a four-goal margin in Madison. In their June 27 loss to Oakland, they entered the fourth quarter down by six, only to nearly come all the way back before falling by one in the final seconds. 

When the Shred get off to a good start, they look unbeatable. It’s been when they get down early where they find themselves in trouble. Across their seven losses, they have only finished the first quarter with the lead once, a one-goal lead against Colorado on June 6 that turned into a one-goal loss. In five of those losses, the Shred spotted their opponents to start the game, including some huge deficits against Oakland twice and Minnesota. 

The Shred are one of the best-coached teams in the league, and Head Coach Bryce Merrill very rightfully has won one Coach of the Year award, and is featured in the conversation for the prize perennially. When they are allowed to get out of the gate, they pull away with their speed, skill, and absolutely decisive style of play. But that same decisiveness makes them easy to gameplan for. Opponents know exactly what Salt Lake would like to do, and it’s a (not so) simple matter of knocking their talented roster and dynamic approach off-balance early. Merrill, the coaching staff, and the players have been able to make adjustments and respond in most of their losses, but it’s been either too deep a hole, or too late to start the climb. 

Can Salt Lake weather the early storm that Seattle surely has planned for them? Even better, can they strike early? If they can, they will be a 5-7 team playing for a chance to return to Championship Weekend. If they can repeat the feat against Oakland in the West Division finals, we could see a Shred team peaking at just the right time.

Can Madison's defense force bad deep throws from Indy?

The last playoff game of the weekend will be the fifth (and final) matchup for Indy and Madison in 2026. The 7-5 Radicals won the first three matchups, but I would imagine do not feel particularly comfortable with the results. The first two games saw the AlleyCats play even or control the first three quarters before Madison wore them down in the fourth, and the third game featured a weaker Indianapolis roster and poor weather conditions. The fourth game was a shocking 31-18 blowout in favor of the ‘Cats in front of the Madison faithful at Breese Stevens Field, both the biggest win against a non-Detroit opponent in AlleyCats history, and the worst loss in the proud history of the Radicals.

The Radicals have long played better than the sum of their parts, an excellently coached team with a hallmark of creative defensive sets, with more wrinkles than an English bulldog. This team is no different, having moved last season’s goal-scoring champ, Anthony Gutowsky, over to defense with great effect. They lost very little from their O-line with the move, as Pieran Robert broke out this summer after two strong seasons to start his career, and finished as the regular-season leader in goals himself in 2026. And Gutowsky was deadly on the counter-attack, scoring multiple breaks most games. 

That said, the Radicals have played the AlleyCats O-line largely in person-to-person defense with little in the way of help over the top against a line that features the leading huckers in the league in the form of Elliot Hawkins and Jake Felton. In the Cats’ win over Madison, Hawkins racked up nine assists, and Felton tacked on another eight, with both throwers going over 430 yards through the air. 

The absences of Sofiène Bontemps and particularly Jonathan Mast will be significantly damaging to the Alleycats. Indy plays an extremely high-variance style of offense, and both players were able to get the O-line into positions to succeed, Mast from the backfield and Bontemps in the cutter layer. It feels likely that the Radicals have been holding back some defensive tactics for the playoffs, and it’s a lock that a team renowned for making opposing offenses problem-solve will not roll out a defense that allows the big AlleyCats shooters to have clean looks. Indianapolis will attack vertically with hucks. Can Madison force those shots to be out of rhythm? If they can and Gutowsky runs free on the break chances, the Radicals will bring down their fourth win over Indy this season. If they don’t, the AlleyCats will get to take their haymaker-throwing team to Minnesota for a puncher’s chance at Championship Weekend.

Can San Diego create pressure against Carolina's star-studded offense?

The Carolina Flyers have been one of the best teams in the league all season, and were supercharged with the additions of Tobias Brooks and 2026 Callahan Award winner Zeke Thoreson halfway through the summer. They are third in the league in both O-line conversion rate and hold percentage, and have seen the attack open up since the duo from the University of Colorado joined the lineup. 

This is an extreme challenge for the Growlers. San Diego does not have a deep roster, and has seen availability shake the foundations of their lines. A strong and tested O-line has had stretches of inconsistency with key pieces out of the lineup, but the Growlers have really struggled most on the defensive side of the disc. Simply put, they have not been able to generate break chances all season long. They have had games where they forced only six turnovers (Carolina to open the season), 11 turnovers (Oakland), 12 turnovers (Atlanta), and even a game where the turnover-prone Houston Havoc only turned it over 14 times. And even when they do have the disc, they are converting at only a 56.8 percent clip, 10th in the league. 

They do have two advantages this weekend in Carolina. The Flyers have turned the disc over a bit more in the second half of the season as they have pushed the ceiling of their offense, and the Growlers will have a fully-stocked D-line for what feels like the first time all season. Can San Diego take the disc away and convert? If they can, they have a chance for the upset.

Can DC disrupt New York's offensive flow?

We end with the league’s best rivalry, one that New York has a slight edge all time (22-17), in overtime and double OT (2-1), in one-point games (8-7), and in the playoffs (3-2). But the last time these two teams faced off, the Breeze pulled off a stunning block-and-buzzer-beater to shock the Empire. And the last time they played in the playoffs, the Breeze blew out New York like they never had before, a 23-12 trouncing to end the Empire’s season. 

But beyond that loss to DC and a later loss to Boston (both at home), the Empire have looked almost bulletproof. Their O-line is converting at 67.7 percent, right behind their own league record of 69 percent set in 2022, and their 78.6 hold percentage is third all-time behind the Empire (81.2)  and Flyers (79.9) of 2022. This is one of the greatest offenses in history. And the more possessions and points there are in a given game, the harder it’ll be to keep up. That’s terrible news for the Breeze, because not only do the Empire score efficiently, they score often. New York and their opponents are tied for first in the league with a combined 43.2 points per game. And they are only widening the gap of how many of those points belong to them–in their four games since their loss to Boston, the Empire are averaging 31.5 points per game, with an average margin of victory of 11.25 points per game. And the Breeze are not the best equipped to slow the game down and turn it into a grind, as they and their opponents finished fourth in the league by combining for 42.2 points per game. 

Past iterations of the Breeze have been famous for small-ball possessions that took minutes off the clock. That team is long gone now, replaced with an explosive squad that plays aggressively in vertical space. But if they can shrink the number of points in the game, they can make it harder for the Empire to pull away, and as they showed in their upset win in New York back in May, a close game can belong to anybody; the Empire are 10-0 in games decided by four or more goals, and 0-2 in games decided by three goals or fewer. It would be foolish to think the experience and talent of New York struggle in crunch time, and those results more simply highlight how volatile a close game can really be. 

DC will need to grind out long offensive possessions to keep the Empire O off the field, or run a defense that forces New York to take their time scoring, or win three or four end-of-quarter scenarios. They may need all of those things to happen. If they can do it, they have a chance to knock out a title favorite in the first round.