The Georgia Swarm finished 9-9. Right there in the middle. Not bad enough to write off, not good enough to take seriously as a playoff threat. That’s the Swarm’s story in 2024-25, and it’s both frustrating and kind of fascinating depending on how you want to look at it.

For a US expansion franchise still building its identity in the Southeast, 9-9 and a playoff berth is progress. For a team with the talent Georgia showed in flashes this season, 9-9 feels like a ceiling that got in the way.

The Good Half

Georgia was a legitimate problem for teams early in the season. The Swarm showed up ready to compete, played with energy, and reminded the league that the Southeast isn’t just a geographical curiosity — it’s a real market producing real lacrosse. There were stretches where this team looked like it belonged in the conversation with the upper tier of the East.

Zed Williams is the name you need to know if you don’t already. The kid is the real deal. His combination of athleticism, lacrosse IQ, and playmaking ability gives Georgia something to genuinely build around. When Williams was locked in, the Swarm offense had an identity. That’s not nothing — plenty of NLL franchises have spent years searching for that anchor and never found one.

The floor-spacing and pace Georgia showed in their best games was genuinely fun to watch. They’re not a one-dimensional team. They can push in transition, they can run half-floor sets, and they’ve got enough athleticism to bother teams defensively when they’re engaged.

The Bad Half

Then there’s the inconsistency. And it wasn’t just losing to good teams — every team loses to good teams. Georgia had the kind of losses that make you squint at the standings and wonder which version of this franchise showed up. Flat performances. Mental lapses. Games where the energy that made them dangerous in the first quarter evaporated by halftime.

The 7th seed draw in the playoffs illustrated the problem perfectly. Georgia earned their spot, but the reward for finishing exactly at .500 was a first-round matchup with Saskatchewan — a team that went 13-5 and was loaded from top to bottom. The Roughnecks handled the Swarm 13-9, and it wasn’t particularly dramatic. Saskatchewan is just what a finished product looks like, and Georgia is not that yet.

The margin between the 6th seed and the 7th seed in this league is enormous in terms of playoff bracket positioning. San Diego and Calgary both landed better draws at 9-9 and 10-8 respectively. That’s the cold reality of what inconsistency costs you — not just in the loss column, but in the quality of your postseason path.

What Has to Change

Georgia doesn’t need a teardown. They need to stop treating their best performances as events and start treating them as the standard. That’s a culture question as much as a roster question, and it’s the hardest problem in professional sports to diagnose from the outside.

Depth is the other issue. When Williams and their top contributors were clicking, the Swarm were competitive with anyone. When the supporting cast had an off night, there wasn’t enough behind them to compensate. Building out that second unit — finding pieces who can hold ground when your stars are being neutralized — is the difference between a 9-9 team and a 12-6 team in this league.

Goaltending and defensive structure also need a hard look in the offseason. Georgia gave up enough goals in key moments to turn winnable games into losses. Fix that, and suddenly the record looks different.

The Verdict

The Georgia Swarm are not irrelevant. Say that clearly, because some people will try to dismiss them as a novelty expansion team that had a meh year and move on. That’s wrong. This franchise has a legitimate star in Zed Williams, a fanbase in a lacrosse-hungry market, and enough raw material to build something real.

But 9-9 with a first-round exit against a team that never broke a sweat is also not a success. It’s a proof of concept that still needs a lot of construction work before it becomes the finished building. The Swarm showed the league they can be a playoff team. Now they need to show they can be a playoff threat — and those are two very different things.

The lacrosse is in Georgia. The talent is in Georgia. The results just need to catch up.