If you haven’t followed Major League Soccer until now, or only recently moved to Denver (I see a lot of you are new in town — there are 36,379 folks new to the metro area in just the last year alone) the Rapids’ 2018 season was a total and complete train wreck.

The team won eight, lost 19, and tied seven matches. On the road, Colorado won just 2 matches: a 1-0 squeaker against a Vancouver squad that fired their coach and dissolved nearly their entire roster at season’s end, and a 2-0 win against a 10th-place Minnesota team that was almost as bad as Colorado was. Oh yeah, and that Vancouver goal? That was an own-goal — they scored on themselves.

There are two vital questions to be asked about this club right now. First, did the Rapids’ front office spend the three months of the offseason getting better? And second, is what they did enough to make the 2019 MLS playoffs?

But we gotta break this down … real … slow … because the stuff I’m about to describe took place over the last three months. We can’t just cut to the chase, kids.

Offseason changes to the defense

Returnees: Tim Howard (GK), Danny Wilson (CB), Tommy Smith (CB), Axel Sjoberg (CB), Kortne Ford (CB), Deklan Wynne (D)

Subtractions: Zac MacMath (GK), Andrew Dykstra (GK), Edgar Castillo (LB), Marlon Hairston (RB), Kip Colvey (LB/RB), Mike daFonte (LB/CB)

Additions: Sam Vines (LB), Clint Irwin (GK), Andre Rawls (GK), Keegan Rosenberry (RB), Sam Raben (CB)

The 2016 Rapids conceded just 32 goals allowed; best in MLS. The 2017 Rapids let in 51 goals, which sunk them to the 14th-best defense in the league out of 22 teams. In 2018, Colorado surrendered 63 goals and fell to 17th out of 23 teams.

Things are trending in the wrong direction.

So you would think this would be an area of concern for the Rapids’ front office brain trust of head coach Anthony Hudson, assistant general manager Fran Taylor, head of scouting Mitch Murray, and general manager Pádraig Smith. (Padraig is pronounced ‘Porrick’. I know, Gaelic is super confusing. Pro tip: the name ‘Saoirse’ is… not pronounced like it is written. At all.)

However, the team has chosen to make a few, but not a ton, of defensive changes. The Rapids’ back-five in 2018 was Edgar Castillo, Tommy Smith, Kortne Ford and Marlon Hairston, with Tim Howard in goal. For 2019, the team shed Castillo because his purchase price from Mexican club Monterrey was too steep, and dropped Marlon Hairston, a converted midfielder who started the year hurt and never looked comfortable as a right back.

Left back could be filled by one of three options: 1) fresh-faced Academy product Sam Vines, 2) New Zealand international Deklan Wynne, or 3) the longest-serving Rapids player on the roster, left midfielder Dillon Serna.

Vines might be the light and the truth, but he’s also 19 years old, so it needs to be assumed there will be growing pains along the way. Wynne was pretty bad in 2018, but maybe (hopefully?) that’s because he was played out-of-position at center-back. Serna is interesting — he played at left back for the USMNT U-23 team back in 2016 and got a few reps at right back last year when Marlon Hairston was hurt. He’s played at left-back in all three of the Rapids’ pre-season matches so far. It seems like a gamble: his dribbling, speed and heads-up passing are all good, but can he defend? Left-back is really the great unknown for Colorado this year.

Meanwhile on the other side of the pitch, former Philadelphia Union fullback Keegan Rosenberry was acquired with $400,000 in TAM and GAM (for the uninitiated to the Major League Soccer world, this is like MLS monopoly money). The 25-year-old is a well-regarded defender and former No. 3 overall pick in the MLS SuperDraft.

Up the middle, it is likely that the team will stay with Smith and Ford, who weren’t all that good in 2018, as the aforementioned “Goals Against” numbers have shown.

They’ll be backed by the infamous “Secretary of Defense,” Howard, although some fans were leery enough of his performances enough that they might want to demote him to Assistant Attache for Naval Affairs. The advanced metrics point toward him being roughly league average last season, with a 0.71 GA-xGA, making him roughly 13th out of 22 keepers with more than 2,000 minutes. Which is fine, if you ignore the fact that Howard earned $2.48 million last year and takes up one of the team’s two Designated Player slots. Based on the money, you kind of want to see more.

Colorado will keep Danny Wilson and Axel Sjoberg as spare center-backs. Sjoberg was once a Defender of the Year finalist, but little injuries here and there have knocked him off course the past two years. In regards to Wilson, last year I wrote that he “hadn’t nailed down a starting spot anywhere or proven to be a difference maker, which could be excused if he were making a league-minimum salary. Danny Wilson, however, is making $540,000 this year.”

In the event Tim Howard misses some time due to injury, Colorado brought back former No. 1 netminder Clint Irwin. An outspoken fan favorite, Irwin was a top-10 keeper in 2015 when he was with Colorado. The new third-string keeper, Andre Rawls, had a strong USL season with Orange County SC. Mostly, I’m excited about him because he will constantly remind me of an obscure principle of modern moral philosophy by a guy who may or may not be Andre’s grandfather.

All told, there’s good reason to be anxious about the defense in 2019. Right back is an upgrade; left back is probably a downgrade, and the unimpressive 2018 centerback corps is the same. Colorado’s goalkeeper is going to spend 2019 collecting retirement gifts across the league, which you hope won’t affect his mental preparation, but who knows? Howard already spent time in 2018 in the broadcast booth and shilling for USL expansion club Memphis 901 FC, so I think it is appropriate to wonder how much focus he has for a final MLS season.

The reason for the lack of change or significant spending on the defense is probably philosophical. After former GM Paul Bravo and coach Pablo Mastroeni were ousted in 2017, the club issued a new mission statement going forward. Entitled ‘The Rapids Way,’ the op-ed posted in The Denver Post exclaimed, among other things, that the team would shift away from being what they had been known to be: a club with a grungy, hard-nosed defensive ethos. Instead, the new-look Rapids would “become a more attack-minded team.”

Better, worse, or the same?

Sad to say, it likely will be worse. Rosenberry will help at right back, but left-back will be significantly worse than when the club had the excellent Edgar Castillo. Plus the expected formation — a 4-4-2 diamond — will mean that the defense will have to do a lot of the defending without help from a true defensive midfielder. Could the Rapids set a team record by conceding 70 goals in 2019? I don’t think so. Smith will likely adjust to MLS some more, and Ford or Sjoberg are both still young and likely to show improvement. But conceding 55-plus goals again is a real likelihood.