Nashville Set the MLS Points Record While Allowing Just 25 Goals — and Their First Playoff Opponent Will Be One of the East's Two Leakiest Defenses

Nashville SC finished the 2026 MLS regular season with 77 points, the most any club has ever collected, after Sam Surridge scored twice in the second half of a 2-0 Decision Day win over FC Cincinnati at TQL Stadium on Saturday. The number that explains the record, though, is not on the points column. It is 25, the goals Nashville allowed in 34 games.

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Nashville went 23-3-8, breaking the 74-point mark Inter Miami set in 2024. According to MLS, B.J. Callaghan's team also set league records for wins in the post-shootout era (23), home wins (15), points per game (2.26), fewest losses (three), fewest goals allowed (25) and Supporters' Shield winning margin (13 points), and tied the record for clean sheets with 17.

The attacking numbers are good, not historic. Nashville scored 71 goals, nine fewer than Inter Miami's 80 this season, according to the final Eastern Conference table. Miami still finished 17 points behind them. The difference sits almost entirely at the other end: Miami conceded 59, more than twice Nashville's total.

Rookie goalkeeper Brian Schwake is the clearest symbol of that. His five saves at Cincinnati earned his league-leading 16th clean sheet in his first 33 MLS starts, the Associated Press reported, and MLS lists that total as a joint league record. In front of him, Maxwell Woledzi and Jeisson Palacios formed what MLS calls an elite center-back pairing.

Saturday's win was not a stroll. Cincinnati outshot Nashville 15-14, the two teams put five shots each on target, and the hosts won six corners to Nashville's two, according to the Cincinnati game report.

Nashville did what they have done all year: they kept the door shut and waited untill a chance came. Surridge finished from Andy Nájar's assist in the 61st minute and added the second in the 86th, set up by Patrick Yazbek. "It's going to go down in history!" Surridge said afterward in a clip posted by MLS.

The brace took the English striker to 21 league goals after 24 last season, making him the sixth player in MLS history to score at least 20 in back-to-back seasons, per the AP. Captain Hany Mukhtar finished with 17 goals and eight assists, and Cristian Espinoza added 15 assists.

The loss dropped Cincinnati to ninth in the East once Columbus beat Chicago 4-3, so Pat Noonan's side now travels to Orlando City for the wild-card game, scheduled for Nov. 19 after the international break. The winner gets Nashville in a best-of-three Round One series.

That bracket sets up the starkest defensive mismatch available. Orlando conceded 78 goals this season, the most in the Eastern Conference, and Cincinnati conceded 75, the second most. Whichever team comes through will have allowed at least three times as many goals as Nashville did.

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Regular-season records do not guarantee anything in a knockout format, and Inter Miami's 74-point team in 2024 is the reminder. But as Supporters' Shield winners, Nashville hold hosting priority all the way to MLS Cup on Dec. 18, and they will open the playoffs against an opponent that has spent the season doing exactly what they almost never do: giving up goals.