Offseason Guides: A soft reboot in Houston, while Colorado's got more work to do

First, let me start with an apology for no Monday newsletter this week. The first round of the playoffs as well as some stuff outside my professional life ground me down a little bit to the point where I just needed to take a breather from the grind.

But I’m back now, baby! And the intention is still to do a twice weekly drop until all 30 offseason guides are done, with two teams coming each Monday and two more on Thursdays. We will be back to that twice-weekly cadence next week.

And here are the post-mortems for MLSsoccer:

• Western Conference dregs
• Eastern Conference dregs
• Wild Card losers
• Round 1 Sweeps
• Round 1 three-gamers

Ok, in we go:

Houston Dynamo

2025 finish: 22nd overall on 37 points. That’s a 17-point drop from 2024, which… yikes.

Biggest question: Do they actually have something brewing here or did they get the first phase of this rebuild wrong?

I don’t think there’s any path back towards the mid-50s and legitimate trophy contention (remember, they won the 2023 US Open Cup) if they don’t reckon with that question, and to me it starts with DP No. 9 Ezequiel Ponce. He is the definition of mid:

“Ok,” the theory went, “his hold-up play is actually rugged and good, so maybe we need to add a goalscoring 10 underneath him?”

They went out and tried to do that in April with the acquisition of Ondřej Lingr.1 But like Ponce…

Lots of completed passes, but not many chances created and not many goals. Almost zero dynamism (no pun intended, I swear).

Now, Lingr is on a DP deal that he can be bought down from and Ponce is only guaranteed through 2026, so this is not forever. And I am still bullish on Houston’s overall game model, which had proved resilient until basically the second half of this season.

But what made them actual contenders in 2023 wasn’t just the game model. It was the game model AND the solid defense AND the goalkeeping AND the high-level contributions they got from the top of the roster, often in big games. Those contributions revealed themselves as pitch control more often than raw boxscore numbers, but in the absence of Hector Herrera and Coco Carrasquilla – and thus in the absence of elite pitch control – the DP goalscorers needed to deliver more, and the backline needed to be better, and the goalkeeping needed to be better.

None of them were. And so the Dynamo, uh, lost their spark (pun intended that time; I am so sorry).

Top winter priority: Get a new No. 9.

This doesn’t mean I think they should go out and spend a DP slot on a Ponce replacement, or to bring in a U-22 center forward. But it’s not exactly a vote of confidence, either. Obviously.

What I’m really saying is they absolutely need to bring in another center forward of any stripe – free agent; USL or Next Pro-star; SuperDraft pick; intra-league cashfer; whatever – and have an open competition in camp to see who the starter is when a ball is first kicked in anger. Give the new guy(s) a real chance and don’t go into training with a preconceived notion about who should have the job because of who’s got the bigger salary.

And I will say that my point of view is they’d benefit from sacrificing some of what Ponce brings (again: his hold-up play is very tidy) for a 9 who’s more daring, unpredictable and goal-hungry off the ball, one whose strengths complement the midfield’s (still very good) pitch control rather than simply blending into it.

Bottom line is there are more Brian Whites, Danny Musovskis and Tani Oluwaseyis out there.

State of the roster: In less flux than you’d think, as they brought back all 11 starters from the end of last year, along with a few key subs. I don’t really think that’s the wrong call – I am super high on guys like Jack McGlynn, Brooklyn Raines and Lawrence Ennali, and Artur is still very good – but it does have me a little worried that there’s not going to be as much surgery as this team needs.

That said, they do have the ability to open multiple premium roster slots, cleared a ton of TAM deals off the books and had done a good job of hoarding GAM over the course of 2025. This after spending the previous two years pulling it forward in search of a trophy to maximize the Coco/Herrera2 era.

So they’ve got a good dose of flexibility.

• 2026 TAM players: Artur, Antônio Carlos, Sviatchenko
• 2026 U-22 players: Ennali, McGlynn, Quiñónes
• 2026 DPs: Ponce, Lingr (maybe!)

Where the XI stands now: As mentioned, they did bring back all of the starters from the end of last season, which means they have committed real money to a half old, mostly underperforming backline, as well as goalkeeper Jonathan Bond.

Bond is the canary in the coal mine for head coach Ben Olsen. He was a disaster during his run in LA with the Galaxy, and then was a bigger disaster last year when Houston made him an emergency early-season signing once the since-departed Andrew Tarbell got hurt.

Why? It made no sense – Blake Gillingham is a high-upside young ‘keeper who’d shown well at every level, then walked into the XI once Tarbell got hurt and… kept showing well. Yet he did not play at all after mid-April. Bond played literally every minute and finished second-to-last in American Soccer Analysis’s “goals added” metric, and in the 9th percentile of FBRef’s PSxG-GA.

Olsen’s done a lot of great work since his arrival, but that innate conservatism of his3 hasn’t completely gone away.

If we get to Matchday 1 and Bond is starting behind a CB pairing of Sviatchenko and Antônio Carlos, I think this team’s going to be in real trouble.

4-2-3-1:

• GK: ???
• LB: Andrade
• LCB: Antônio Carlos
• RCB: Sviatchenko
• RB: Dorsey
• DM: Artur
• CM: Raines
• LW: Ennali
• AM: ???
• RW: McGlynn
• FW: Ponce(??)

Things to know:

• Just in general Houston have had so much more success with their acquisitions from within the league than from without over the past few years. McGlynn is the obvious one, but Dorsey, Artur, even Steve Clark back in the day.
• I am a huge Ennali guy but it needs to be said that his effectiveness thus far is more theory than actual fact.
• Sadly, they do not have their first-round SuperDraft pick, as it was traded to Orlando.

Colorado Rapids

2025 finish: 11th in the West, missing out on the final Wild Card slot on the first tiebreaker (wins) despite spending almost the entire year above the red line.

Biggest question: Can they fix the central defense?

First, I’m going to give you some numbers:

• They went from +5.7 xGD in 2024 to -5.8 xGD in 2025.
• They went from +1 actual goal differential in 2024 to -12 actual goal differential in 2025. This is because Zack Steffen went from one of the worst shot-stoppers in the league to one of the very best.

I just want you to have that context. The Rapids were only in the race because Steffen was on a season-long heater last year. If he’d managed to stay healthy for two or three more games, they’d have made the Wild Card.

But his excellence only put a bandage on what’s been a gaping wound for a year-and-a-half now, he didn’t cure it. And the wound is this: they have not been able to replace Moïse Bombito. The Canadian international was sold4 in July of 2024 for a league-record fee for an outgoing CB. To that point in the season Colorado had an xGA of 1.37 per game, which was one of the best marks in the league, as was their xGD of +0.47/90.

Once Bombito was out the door the Rapids had literally the worst underlying numbers in the league. That then got worse in the playoffs with a humiliating elimination at the hands of the Galaxy.

And then in 2025? Well, any improvement in 2025 was marginal.

Now, I do think some of that can be fixed with a better structure through midfield? Absolutely; the Rapids just could not stop the ball in two years under now-former head coach Chris Armas. Whoever the new coach is has to come in with a plan for how to fix that.

But this team did not have answers at CB, and Armas was reluctant to do anything except trot out one underperforming veteran after another. It was brutal, and ultimately counterproductive.

Top winter priority: Find the right head coach.

This is the easiest thing to say but maybe the hardest thing to do?

Think about it: Armas was an elite player and, by all accounts, a really superb assistant coach in MLS before going and getting to experience life at the top of the club game in Europe.5 Yes, he’d struggled in two prior head coaching stints in MLS, but lots of coaches improve in their second or third go-round, and a guy with his resume was worth taking a chance on.

It just resoundingly did not work out.

Meanwhile, at this time last year nobody had ever heard of Jesper Sørensen, and Mikey Varas was a youth coach. Bradley Carnell? He’d washed out of St. Louis after a season-and-a-half! Well, those first two guys just authored (are still authoring!) two of the best-coached seasons in MLS history, and Carnell’s the Coach of the Year.

So yeah, all CSO Pádraig Smith needs to do is go out and find his own Varas or Sørensen or Carnell or B.J. Callaghan – someone who gets the best out of veterans, develops youngsters, keeps the locker room together, has a game model with clear principles of play, and authors a style that is aesthetically pleasing beyond all expectations.6

No sweat.

State of the roster: As of now they’ve got two DPs in Paxten Aaronson and Rafa Navarro, but I don’t think anyone truly expects Navarro to be back next year. There were reportedly a number of offers for the Brazilian No. 9 over the summer, and everything I’ve heard suggests there will be more to come in the winter. And these will supposedly be offers of the type no MLS team would say no to.

That means they’ll have some premium roster slots to play with, as well as a good amount of GAM.

They will, I’m sure, want to build around Aaronson, who they spent a boatload on after selling Đorđe Mihailović mid-season. That makes sense to me.

• 2026 TAM players: Atencio, Cannon, Holding, Maxsø (???), Steffen, Vines
• 2026 U-22 players: Bassett, Ku-Dipietro, Manyoma
• 2026 DPs: Aaronson, Navarro

Where the XI stands now: Late in the year, Aaronson – who looked good, but didn’t produce – talked about how he’d actually played deeper in the Eredivisie than where he was deployed under Armas. And so I kind of wonder if both he and Cole Bassett will get looks as free 8s in a 4-3-3 to start next season.

But I don’t know for sure. I also don’t know whether the wingers that the Rapids have invested a ton in (high SuperDraft picks and U-22 slots, mostly) will finally get a shot under the new head coach, whoever that may be.7

What I will bet my life on, though, is that if (when?) Navarro is sold, homegrown No. 9 Darren Yapi gets the starting job. He’s so naturally gifted, and then on top of that he improved his off-ball work so much over the past year. Kid’s earned it.

4-3-3:

• GK: Steffen
• LB: Vines
• LCB: ???
• RCB: ???
• RB: Cannon
• DM: Atencio
• CM: Aaronson
• CW: Bassett
• LW: Ku-DiPietro
• FW: Yapi
• RW: ???

Things to know:

• I’m giving Atencio, Sam Vines and Reggie Cannon a lot of grace here. None of those guys looked like starters in 2025, but all have in the past – high-level starters – under different circumstances. I’m betting on them to rediscover that form under a new head coach.
• As usual they’ve loaded up on SuperDraft picks, hoarding four first-rounders acquired via various trades over the past few years.

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