Four Questions as Reign Return from Break

The Seattle Reign return from their month-long break on Saturday with a road game against the North Carolina Courage. The Reign are 4-5-2 through 11 fixtures while the Courage are 5-3-3 through the same number of games.

While the Reign had a rebound year in 2025, finishing fifth in the NWSL, they are currently 11th in points (14) going into their final 19 games and 10th in points per game (1.27). And this is in spite of a strong 3-0-1 start where they outscored their opponents 7-4.

This naturally raises questions, from the performances of individual players to the general setup of the team in an era of play where the best teams are built around a big star.

Will Claudia Dickey return to her A+ performance of yesteryear once she returns?

Claudia Dickey won't be in the lineup on Saturday due to an injury suffered with the USWNT, but as the season progresses, her performance will be key.

The biggest reason for Seattle's unexpected improvement in the 2025 season was the career year that the keeper put together in net. She led the league with 90 saves last year and had a 74.4% save percentage compared to a league-average 70.5%.

This year, however, her save percentage has declined to 71.7%; that isn't a big dip on average, but plenty of the goals she has given up have been ones that she shouldn't have let through, with a few late reactions leading to some scores for opponents.

The advanced stats, for what they're worth, give a picture of a stark drop in production year-to-year. Goals Added (G+) is an estimation of the effect of a player's actions on the chances of either team scoring a goal. As you might be able to imagine, keepers have an outsized impact on G+, and according to American Soccer Analysis' version of G+, Dickey was the top keeper in the NWSL last year with 6.09 and second all-NWSL only to Temwa Chawinga's 7.60 G+ [1].

But over 11 games this year, Dickey has a -0.77 G+. Perhaps that figure is a bit too harsh on her, but it comports well with an eye test assessment that she has gone from top-line keeper to much more middling in her performance this year. She can obviously still be the kind of class-of-the-league shotstopper in net that she was last year, but the Reign need that to materialize sooner rather than later.

The question isn't can she but will she. And that's obviously unknowable.

How much time does Mia Fishel have before the team has to pivot?

I won't bury the lede, the answer is "a lot", at least from the team's perspective. Laura Harvey made that abundantly clear during Friday's media availability, noting her drive to improve and get to where she needs to be in order for her to become a true threat up front.

Fishel hasn't been what the Reign had hoped for over the season, with zero goals and zero assists so far in the year. Head coach Laura Harvey praised her efforts to improve herself, noting that she's not where she wants to be at personally as it comes to performance. But the coach also looked to give her some leeway based on her injury and ancillary improvements.

"For me, Mia isn't judged solely on goals. Is it a stat that you want forwards to be judged on? Yes. Is it the absolute? No. Not in the way Mia plays. I think last year was a building block for everything, and I think this year, her hold up play, her willingness to be able to put teams under pressure," Harvey said. "She missed a big chunk of games in this first part of the season. So, if she'd have played every minute of every 11 games that we've played, I think we could be more critical - but we have played 11 games, Mia has not."

This has some merit to it, of course. Fishel has played in seven matches this year for a total of 352 minutes (an average of 50 minutes per appearance) due to injury issues, and her performance in the team's first game this year was very promising ... up until the aforementioned injury took her out in the 78th minute.

"It's just about getting that one goal here with the Reign and I believe that the rest will come with that," Fishel said, expressing confidence in her future as the Reign's striker.

But there will have to be a point in the future where the Reign have to hedge their bets. The goal had clearly been for Fishel to realize sky-high potential as a nine, but is that prospect meaningfully less likely by now? What do they need to see over the next month or so in order for that confidence to be maintained?

And even if Fishel begins to improve at a rapid pace, getting a player who is truly elite right now wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing. Are they willing to make that kind of splash?

How can the Reign be more goal-dangerous?

A common theme in the media availabilities is that the team needs to take a more offensive-minded approach with the ball. I'll let the quotes speak for themselves here.

Laura Harvey: "We've gotta match that sort of solid, don't get beaten mentality with being a little bit risky on the attacking side, to get bodies higher up the field, to get more people around the goal, so we can turn that one chance or one cross or one opportunity into a multiple-layer attack, and the only way you're gonna do that is by having more bodies up the field. So that's been a focus in the summer."

Mia Fishel: "There's definitely been talks since the beginning of the season with trying to be dangerous and create more goal-scoring chances ... we tend to not get a lot of in-behind final third chances, and we've been trying to talk with, what's the problem, what's going on? And I feel like the main thing is getting more numbers forward instead of creating this isolation with how we feel as forwards sometimes in the attack."

Aspiration and actualization are two different things, however, and the team needs more consistent ball control in the midfield amongst the players who turn defense into attack. Currently, however, some of their best players are seemingly specialized: Nérilia "Coco" Mondésir has 0.62 G+ in passing and -0.29 G+ in receiving. Ainsley McCammon has 0.31 G+ in dribbling but -0.2 G+ in passing and -0.17 G+ in receiving. That's not inherently a bad thing, but having such players without better stalwarts to fall back upon isn't a winning recipe.

There will be a boost coming at some point soon, with Jess Fishlock set to return much more quickly than anyone would have expected (though it's still unclear exactly when). Even with just five appearances (and limited minutes within) this season, Fishlock still has the second-most G+ (0.47) of anyone on the Reign roster. She has a clear impact in attacking vigor and final third connection when she is on the pitch, even as this is her last season in the NWSL.

It ties into a more general question about the team's roster construction: can they survive in this league without a big star to carry the team?

Can the Reign prove the league wrong when it comes to roster construction?

Trinity Rodman, Barbra Banda, Dudinha. Sophia Wilson on Seattle's archrival. The best teams in this league are often built around elite stars, of which the Reign currently don't have any; a minutes-limited, 39-year-old Jess Fishlock is the closest they currently have.

It's worth noting that the team doesn't necessarily approach things the same way. Stars are good to have, of course, but the Reign have long approached things from a perspective of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts. There are top teams in the league who aren't as star-heavy - Utah comes to mind - but they get plenty more contributions across the pitch than the Reign have been getting over their first 11 games.

The potential need to bring in a big piece from elsewhere is compounded by a decidedly mixed developmental arc over the course of the season so far. Emeri Adames looked like a potential budding threat in the front row last year, but she has taken a big step back this year. Sally Menti has taken a big step back in the midfield from a 2025 that, like Adames', showed promise.

While the Reign have gotten much better performances from Coco and Dahlien, they haven't had the kind of broad-based improvements that they needed given their roster construction.

The team is, of course, caught in-between. If they can get the development in Fishel and Coco that they're looking for this year, they would have some room to spend money elsewhere than striker or number 10 come 2027. Coco is more of a playmaking winger than a true 10, however, and so the team's plan is probably to shore up the 10 role with Fishlock gone after this season.

But that plan needs the Fishel development to fall into place, and it needs greater contribution from players like Adames. We may just see what happens if the team gets the development they're looking for, but there's a good chance the Reign are looking at the same lack of clarity and direction in a month's time. What then?

[1] This is technically G+ above average rather than raw G+.