Seattle Sounders: Could Jordan Morris Join MLS Elite?
By Nick Vitalis
Could our hometown hero become a nationwide sensation?
There’s no doubt about it: this has been a difficult season. We’ve scraped the low end of the Western Conference, and twice went nearly an entire month between wins. We lost Oba before it started (my heart will go on…barely), but for those dedicated fans still tuning in, there has been one bright spot: Jordan Morris.
After contract talks in January of this year, Werder Bremen of the Bundesliga failed to sign Morris, and the Sounders shortly after signed him. With dearly departed Oba leaving soon after that announcement, Morris’ expected role went from supporting Oba and Clint Dempsey to full-fledged starting striker alongside Dempsey, to now being the top of the attack in the new 4-2-3-1 formation. Looking forward, could we see Morris jump from being merely a great forward for us to one of the elite goal-scorers in MLS?
“I have a big chance to score a goal … then I don’t finish my chances and we come out with a loss.”
He’s shown the capability to take on an entire team, like last weekend against Portland. He received a pass in the defensive third before darting across the field and breaking a double-team (pictured above). We’ve always known about the stallion-like pace. With Nicolás Lodiero now able to drop perfectly weighted passes at his toes, his sheer speed goes from scary to nightmarish for opposing backlines. He’s debatably a scarier threat than Dempsey nowadays.
He’s leading the Sounders with 9 goals. And yet, we can’t help feeling like he ought to have scored more.
Why Hasn’t He?
Part of it seems to be his reluctance to shoot, probably out of nervousness. He also takes missed opportunities and losses very personally. In an interview with FOX Soccer, Morris said, “It’s the same kind of story all year: I have a big chance to score a goal … then I don’t finish my chances and we come out with a loss, so it’s frustrating.”
It is a good thing to see Morris taking on that much responsibility for the teams success. It shows maturity as a player and leader, something good to see at such a young age. However, when you put that much pressure on yourself, you’ll be more likely to pass the ball instead of pulling the trigger. You also will be more likely to misfire when you do shoot. You lose your focus on the moment.
Additionally, what I got out of it is that he is being too hard on himself.
To see if I was right, I compared Morris’ numbers with the three leading scorers in MLS. Those men would be Sebastian Giovinco, David Villa, and Bradley Wright-Phillips, each with 16 goals. The particular statistics I used, respectively are SH%, the percent of shots converted for goals, and SOG%, the percent of shots that were on goal. I used shooting statistics for this season only, and also included their goal totals. I threw in Dempsey also, just for comparisons sake.
Giovinco: .098/.333/16
Villa: .122/.419/16
Wright-Phillips: .208/.506/16
Morris: .153/.491/9
Dempsey: .123/.338/8
Looking at the data, a couple things are apparent. First, you can see that Morris is shooting with more accuracy and efficiency than all but Wright-Phillips. His SOG% is just barely below the Red Bulls star forward.
Of course, part of this is due to his nervousness and reluctance to shoot. However, looking at his Stanford career stats, they look similar.
2013: .120/.600/6
2014: .089./.356/4
2015: .224/.517/13
So, why hasn’t Jordan Morris scored more goals? Simply, he hasn’t taken as many shots. He’s taken 59 to Villa’s 133. Given he could maintain the same efficiency, if Morris had taken as many shots as Villa, he’d have 20 goals. That would be the first MLS Golden Boot for someone in their first professional season.
Obviously, it would be hard to maintain the same numbers while more than doubling the number of shots. However, now being the lone striker, he’s got to take more shots, and even if his efficiency numbers drop, his goal totals are going to stack up.
It isn’t unreasonable to think that next season, with a stronger squad and a little more experience on this stage, Jordan Morris will be leading the chase for the Golden Boot. We could very well see him join the upper echelon of MLS. He just needs to take more shots and trust himself. Everyone else already does.