A Year Below Expectation
The 2025 Rapids were constructed by Pádraig Smith and led by Chris Armas in search of a trophy. The team fell well short. Here's HTHL's after-action report of what went wrong this year.
Yeah, we pretty much saw this coming.
After a strong run at the beginning of the season, Colorado slumped by mid-year back into the predictable and unremarkable season of more losses than wins and a narrow miss of the playoffs. In a league where basically two-thirds of the teams make the playoffs. The Rapids began the year in league play with 16 points in their first 10 games. Over the next 24 games, they pulled in just 25 points, which in any league is just not good enough.
This is pretty much the ethos of the team: several mediocre-to-bad seasons, sprinkled with a good season here and there. Rinse, repeat. For specifics, check this post from earlier this year ‘The Downward Spiral.’
I optimistically thought these Rapids might be able to lash together a playoff spot out of the talented contributions of Rafael Navarro, Djordje Mihailovic, and Cole Bassett. Alas, Djordje asked to be traded, Cole was underwhelming, and the rest of the team wasn’t up to the task. That’s not unsurprising: Colorado’s $13.3 million payroll1 ranked 24th out of 31 teams in MLS. So finishing 22nd in points is to be expected.
I picked the team to finish seventh, but really, that was a placeholder for ‘anywhere from 11th to 5th, but I’m not super optimistic.’ I didn’t miss by much – by comparison I picked Vancouver for 10th and San Diego for 14th. Those are big misses.
But here’s maybe the important thing – the spiritual overview of where we are – which Matt and I have been processing on the podcast for the past few weeks. Colorado continues to spend in the bottom half of the league, and hope that the academy, Pádraig Smith, and magical thinking will produce a miracle. This is becoming tiresome for old school hard core fans like you and me. The Johnny-And-Sally-Come-Latelys to the Rapids will always pop in to a Rapids game and then forget about the team when the NFL season starts. Season ticket holders will quit and the team will somehow convince someone else to invest financially and emotionally in the team.
The end of the 2025 season signifies 14 straight seasons without any trophies - in a league where there are now five trophies on offer every year.2 Below, I will try to make sense of why, once again, 2025 was a year below expectation.3
The Player Eye Test
First off, I’m going to share my opinion based on the eye test and some of the things I’ve said on the podcast about how certain players performances had positive or negative effect the season – whether they were effective or not. Then I’ll go back and look at what the advanced metrics tell us, particularly Goals Added, which always does a good job of converting what happens into a number.
Here we go, rapid fire:
Mihailovic was great and then he left.
Cole Bassett was his usual hustlin’ aggressive self, but he was moved from attacking midfield to defense midfield to the wing and his production declined.
All the fullbacks were below average at pretty much everything.
Andreas Maxsø is an average defender that gives you little in the attack. And that’s devastating for a DP that plays every game.
Ollie Larraz is a good runner, good defender, sloppy passer.
Josh Atencio is a mediocre runner, mediocre runner, sloppy passer.
If you catch Rafa Navarro making a run into the box at the exact right moment, he’s a great striker. But ask him to pass; shoot from distance; cross; head a ball in; dribble his man; or create space and make some magic – and he can’t do it.
OK. Let’s compare that to the numbers.
Rapids Player Performance, By the Numbers
And here’s the numbers. In general, I was right most of the time. Skim this chart below, focusing on the Goals Added number in the final column, and then read my takes below. Of course, take with a grain of salt that G+ is not perfect, but I think it generally describes who was good and who was not.4
Djordje Mihailovic was, indeed, quite good – recording the team’s highest overall G+ of 2.03 mostly on the back of his +1.96 Passing G+ and +0.73 Dribbling G+. He wasn’t really the cause of the Rapids success, though, and his departure didn’t doom the squad. Colorado amassed a 9-6-11 record up till his departure on August 7, and they went 3-2-4 after he left. He indeed was good, and indeed, he left. My take is Djordje being better or worse in 2025 was not the problem.
Cole Bassett’s 2025 overall G+ was a fairly league average +0.28. In 2024 he had the highest G+ on the Rapids, with a +2.06 mark. So Cole wasn’t as good. He had +0.89 Receiving G+ in 2024, and a +0.20 this year. He had a +0.79 Shooting G+ in 2024, and a +0.19 in 2025. He just … wasn’t … as good. Is that because he played several different positions? Is it the guys around him? Unclear. In my humble opinion, Cole Bassett is a really good supporting player in a normal year, but this year he was kinda meh, and that hurt the team.
Reggie Cannon had a -1.79 Overall G+. Keegan Rosenberry had a -0.43 G+. Jackson Travis had a -0.57 in just 748 minutes. Sam Vines had a +0.48 G+. [Rafael Santos’ - 0.16 in only 417 minutes lacks enough data to be conclusive.] So the fullbacks were a net negative of -2.31 G+ for this team. That needs work going forward.
Andreas Maxsø’s -0.61 Passing G+ was third-worst on the team. His interrupting G+ of -0.21 is a bummer for a defender. He was possibly more disappointing that my eye test uncovered. If he’s playing at 4 am this winter playing a Saudi team called ‘Al Something-or-other’, I will not be tuning in.
Ollie Larraz’ +0.10 Interrupting G+ implies he was an ok runner, ok defender. His - 0.20 Passing G+ demonstrates he was also an ok passer. Collectively, he’s ok. I think he’s probably best suited to being a 70th minute D-mid sub than a regular starter, and playing him 2458 minutes, 4th-most on the team, is not great.
Josh Atencio’s + 0.82 Interrupting G+ shows me that I need to get behind him more. He’s not a sloppy passer. I was wrong about him. I will stan Atencio more in 2026. I swear.
Rafa’s fantastic at gathering in a pass and taking a shot. He had the team’s highest G+. I should shut up and just say how great he is and how much worse this team would be without him. He’s also a really great pressing forward. DC’s Christian Benteke and Atlanta’s attacking mid Miguel Almirón aren’t doing that.
So my eyes are pretty good. But I like that math proved me a little wrong in spots.
What about Kevin Cabrál? He sucked. Did that ruin the team?
We will not speak of Kevin Cabrál anymore.
Lousy on the Road
The Rapids had a 8-4-5 (WTL) home record in 2025. Maybe this is a pipe dream, but if that was paired with a totally neutral (and hypothetical) 6-5-6 road record, would have resulted in a total of 51 points, good enough for sixth place in the Western Conference.
Instead, Colorado went a putrid 3-4-10 on the road in 2025, collecting just 13 points out of 51 total up for grabs. That’s 13th out 15 teams in the Western Conference. Only Sporting Kansas City and the LA Galaxy were worse. Road losses to poor teams like the Galaxy and SKC as well as Portland, DC United, Dallas and RSL were strong indicators that tactically and qualitatively, this team didn’t measure up. Maybe the team was too timid. Maybe the players need the additional benefits of altitude to outclass their opponents, but become underwhelming at sea level. I dunno. It’s not my job to fix this problem. Hell, it ain’t even my job to diagnose it. I do this for fun. Yeah, I’m weird. I know.
As Goes Zack Steffen, So Goes the Rapids
The Colorado Rapids went 4-4-3 (WTL) from February 22 through April 26 in MLS League play; which was a fairly decent 1.45 points per game.
From May 3 to August 18, Colorado had a record of 7-4-13, or 1.04 points per game. That’s pretty terrible. So to my mind, the Rapids had two seasons: Spring, and Train Wreck.
Figuring out what was different between those two stretches of the season is one good indicator of what worked and what didn’t in 2025.
In that first stretch of the season - the good stretch - Zack Steffen was the best goalkeeper in MLS according to G-xG, my favorite indicator of GK performance.
That -6.03 G-xG indicates Zack saved 6 extra goals over a normal goalkeeper in the first 9 games he played in the season (Adam Beaudry played one match against Portland, a 3-0 loss on March 22). That’s an unsustainably good rate over a full season – the best season-long G-xGs for a goalkeeper in MLS history since this stat began to be recorded in 2014 were Dorde Petrovic’s -10.75 in 2022; Kristijan Kahlina’s -10.47 in 2024; and Tim Melia’s -10.37 in 2017. Petrovic’s season was so bonkerballs good that New England flipped him to Bournemouth for a $17.5 million fee. Steffen, if he kept that -6.03 pace, would have had about a -15.50 G-xG.
Have I made you feel really great about what an amazing keeper Steffen is? Gee, sorry to get your hopes up kid. It didn’t last.
Here’s a list of MLS keepers G-xG stats from May 3 to October 18.
Yeah. That’s Steffen, now down as the 40th-best GK in MLS out of 61 keepers, with a +0.91 G-xG. Meanwhile Rapids backup Nicolas Hanson had a -4.13 G-xG in 903 minutes; good enough for 3rd in MLS over that stretch.
What I understand out of that is not that Steffen wasn’t very good this year - but rather that the Rapids weren’t as good as their record indicated. Once Steffen started playing like a normal goalkeeper and not a character from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the team’s record turned poor.
Good Buildup, Poor Finishing
The Rapids were pretty decent in 2025 at getting into the final third to create a quality shot. Their offense produced 52.1 xG, 13th in MLS. Using the more advance American Soccer Analysis stat Goals Added, Colorado generated 47.32 G+, good enough for 8th in MLS. So they should have a lot goals, right? Um.
Colorado had only 43 goals in 2025 - that was 21st out of 31 teams in MLS. It’s never good in these end of year articles when I have to remind readers how many teams MLS has, because the Rapids are so close in proximity to the bottom.5
Simply put, they got a lot of guys that don’t hit their shots.
Rafa Navarro underperformed his xG by 4.81 goals.
Cole Bassett underperformed his xG by 3.15 goals.
Ted Ku-Dipietro underperformed his xG by 2.11 goals.
Ollie Larraz underperformed his xG by 1.53 goals.
Chidozie Awaziem underperformed his xG by 1.84 goals.
Another seven players underperformed by around 0.3 to 1.9 goals.6
You just can’t have that many ‘Ooooh! So close!’ reactions from the crowd without it corresponding to losses.
On a positive note, two players significantly exceeded their xG: Keegan Rosenberry and Darren Yapi. Yapi put away 8 goals on only 6.29 xG and only 1593 minutes. Maybe he should be starting every game?
We Used to Be Great at Set Piece Goals. And now, we’re not.
Colorado ended the season with just 2 goals from Dead-Ball Passes - meaning corners, free kicks, and throw-ins. That’s second-worst in MLS. (The LA Galaxy had zero goals from Dead-Ball Passes. They might want to take a look at that.) If you go back to 2019, 2020, and 2021, Colorado absolutely dominated on set pieces. Those were, of course, the days when Colorado midfielder Jack Price was in his prime.
Colorado simply doesn’t have that guy anymore - or anyone even remotely like him. LAFC has Son Min Heung. Miami has Leo Messi. Colorado has missed opportunity; specifically, 55 dead-ball restarts this past year considered ‘shot opportunities’, and 53 of those opportunities came to naught. That needs fixing.
…
That’s the post-mortem. It’s a little harsh; a little grim. We give no quarter here at HTHL, and of course, hindsight blah blah blah. There’s lot’s to fix, and about four months to fix it till the 2026 season.
As reported by capology. My own numbers had the team at around $12 million by seasons end but was up around $15 million at various times. The total roster value changes constantly, but for the Rapids, it’s always towards the low end in MLS.
US Open Cup, Leagues Cup, Supporters Shield, MLS Cup, Concacaf Champions League.
I wanted to call this article ‘What Went Wrong’ but Rapids writer Keith Richards got that title first. Oh well.
It does not take into account, as Pablo Mastroeni noted, the human spirit. It also doesn’t record things like a player’s ability to put in a long throw to the box, or defensive positioning off-ball that makes a pass to a player inadvisable, or a dummy-run into the box, etc. etc. And player performance is always interrelated - Lionel Messi’s numbers on Barcelona in their prime will be much higher than his numbers surrounded by clods. But overall, it tells us most of the story.
When I started writing about the Rapids there were 19 teams in MLS. No, I really don’t know how much bigger the league can get. It does seem like for some reason the desire by billionaires to give Don Garber $500 million has waned.
Connor Ronan, Sam Vines, Josh Atencio, Sam Bassett, K. Cabral, Calvin Harris, Paxton Aaronsen.