It was the Red Bulls’ first win in a month in Major League Soccer on Sunday and it was the first start of the season for one of the team’s surprise packages last year.

Connor Lade, the team’s homegrown defender/midfielder, played the full 90 minutes in the 2-0 victory over visiting Houston after seeing only 22 minutes of playing time in mop-up duty spread over two games. For Lade, it has not so much been a sophomore slump as a disappearance.

“When he came back from the national team into preseason, he obviously was not sharp by his own admission,” Coach Mike Petke said. “There was a lot that he went through. Though he earned it, he was given a lot soon, very soon. It was tough for him to play that much in the off-season.”

Before that national team camp in January, Lade had spent time training with the La Liga club Sevilla in Spain. It had been nonstop, from the beginning of his senior season at St. John’s in Queens through a full M.L.S. season and right into time abroad, with the national team and then back to preparing for the 2013 M.L.S. season.