Level Set 9, Houston Dynamo FC: Slow and Steady Wins the Race, at Least Until It Loses It

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What follows is a brief history of Houston Dynamo FC, plus more brief notes on whatever long-term tendencies they have. Their 2025 season gets weighed on both sides of that and the whole thing ends with where I see things with them in this very specific moment in time - i.e., before First Kick 2026. You should count on things happening between here and there.

The post ends with a scale I came up with to measure the long-term success of every team in Major League Soccer. It does some things well (e.g., count trophies/achievements), other things less well (capture recent trends). It's called the Joint Points Scale and you can find a link that explains what it does. I was really stoned when I came up with the scale and wrote the post. Caveat lector. With that...

Thumbnail History
Houston Dynamo FC, who came in as the Houston Dynamo, weren’t MLS’s first second-wave expansion team (i.e., the ones that came after the 2001 contraction); calling them one doesn’t quite tally either because and they never had to go through the proper expansion team exercise of building from nothing. Moreover, they got stupid fucking lucky in that the team they received had just hoisted the Supporters’ Shield the season prior in San Jose. The San Jose Earthquakes franchise had caught fire in the years before their ownership group yanked out their roots and moved them to the sweatiest bit of Texas. A couple players didn’t make the trip – e.g., defenders Danny Califf and long-time forward Ronald Cerritos – but they came with a handful of the most famous names in Houston Dynamo history – e.g., Dwayne De Rosario, Brian Ching, Eddie Robinson, Pat Onstad, a human assist machine they didn't even know they had named Brad Davis, etc. etc. Between s ready-made roster and employing Dominic Kinnear, one of the best head coaches of the 2000s, they had the horses to kick off franchise history with back-to-back MLS Cups in 2006 and 2007. Minor stumbles aside, the Dynamo wouldn’t slip far out of contending over their first seven or eight seasons in the league. That’s a bit of trip, honestly, when you review the rosters that battled to losses in the 2011 and 2012 MLS Cups (just…how did that team get there in an 18-/19-team MLS?), but it also shows how far a good foundation (and a succession of stingy defenses) can carry a team. My personal highlights from the Dynamo’s glory years included the fingernail-rending battles they played in against Mexico’s CF Pachuca in the CONCACAF Champions’ Cup/League over the 2008 and 2009 seasons, games that marked the first occasion I genuinely believed MLS teams would eventually compete with Liga MX’s best. Sadly, their best days dried up and, aside from the odd hurrah here (U.S. Open Cup winners in 2018!), and the strong run outta nowhere there (2017 playoff semifinalists), Houston idled through the late 2010s and into the early 2020s, while the rest of MLS sprinted ahead. The question of whether they can get back up again remains open. For all the good decisions they made going into 2023 – due to the way he fits the Dynamo’s classic controlled(/stingy) playing model, pulling Ben Olsen, a good fit for the Dynamo’s classic controlled(/stingy) playing model, out of early retirement made all kinds of sense and adding Mexican legend, Hector Herrera, gave them someone to build around, if only for a few seasons – Houston still hasn’t found the attacking ace they need to make all that thuddingly responsible build-up play payoff. Closer than they have been, in other words, but still a player or two short of dangerous. Paging MLS [#.0]’s version of Ching or DeRo…

2025, Briefly
These posts don’t get a ton of traffic, but the real heads may notice that a big part of “my process” on these reviews of unfamiliar teams involves reviewing the regular season minutes played across the roster. Related, I suddenly have less questions about what happened to Houston’s defense in 2025: the two central backs with the most minutes – Obafemi Awodesu and Pablo Ortiz – are first-season players with Houston and they didn’t crack 3,000 minutes together. Ethan Bartlow and Erik Sviatchenko didn’t crack 2,000 minutes together, etc. The Dynamo’s structure kept that slap-dash unit from giving up too many goals – they leaked just above the average rate - but the failure to (really) replaced Hector Herrera, Coco Carrasquilla, and even Corey (freakin’) Baird (fer crissakes) after the post-2024 mass exodus left that sub-average defense with a lift it couldn’t carry. While they didn’t quite stand pat – e.g., Jack McGlynn ranks in the upper tier of No. 8s in MLS, for me (backed it up all right, and at age 22), and Ondrej Lingr came on board (eh) – I doubt even Houston’s most rabid fan could squint hard enough to see a contender with their 2025 roster. They hung in the dregs of the mix until Decision Day, and to their credit, but they didn’t give anyone reason to take them seriously at any point after May 2025.

I didn't say "the future," I said "a future."

Long-Term Tendencies v Recent Trends
For all the game-winners they’ve fielded, the Dynamo have never produced a strong attacking team. On the rare occasions they beat the league average for goals scored – for reference, I count just seven (7!) times – they’ve only gone over by a handful according to my loose scale (said scale jumps to "very over" somewhere around 7-8 goals for/against variance). When they have succeeded, it usually comes when a sturdy defense back-stops one of those attacks that do just enough to make them dangerous – e.g., 2023 – and they rode that all the way to the Western Conference finals. Just to note it (because it ultimately amounted to less, e.g., a penalty-kick-drunk/losing first-round series against Seattle), 2024 showed how hard they can lean into that stingy standard formula when Houston finished one spot higher in the West with a worse offense. To point out the obvious, Houston dies in any season they fail to pull together a top-tier defense, as demonstrated most pungently by the worst, darkest seasons (circa 2014-2022) in team history. How neatly 2025 slips onto that same list can't feel great in Houston. So they did something about it...

Players I Still Like/Additions So Far
There’s cleaning house – i.e., what you’d expect after (yet) another crap season – and there’s stripping a house to the studs for copper. Based on the long list of names currently showing on MLS’s Transfer Tracker, Houston reached for the copper after 2025, with fifteen (15) players let go one way or the other. Brooklyn Raines’ departure (traded to the Revs) was deliberate, but the Dynamo front office cut enough depth-to-starting pieces – e.g., Ethan Bartlow, Daniel Steres, Junior Urso – to make you wonder how hard they thought through the day after the cuts. They haven’t added much yet, top talent, or otherwise - i.e., a pair of homegrowns named Reese Miller (D) and Logan Erb (GK) – which leaves clear, even mandatory, work to be done…pretty much everywhere. Seriously, they declined Awodesu’s option (for now?), the minutes leader for center backs on their 2025 roster. Unless I’m missing some names. At any rate, I expect big changes to this roster between today and First Kick. I thought I saw chatter about Herrera coming back and, love ‘im and all, and no matter his game doesn’t rely on young legs, he’s 35 this season. The plan needs to go beyond that for Houston to keep up with the middle of the wobbly West, never mind the top of it.

Historical Success(/Hysterical Failure)

Total Joy Points: 17

How They Earned Them (& How This Is Calculated, for Reference)
MLS Cup: 2006, 2007
MLS Cup Runner-Up: 2011, 2012
MLS Playoffs Semifinals: 2009, 2013, 2017, 2023
MLS Playoffs/Quarterfinals: 2008, 2013, 2019
CONCACAF Champions Cup Runner-Up: 2008
CCL Quarterfinals: 2009
U.S. Open Cup: 2018, 2023