In 2014, DC United rebounded from the worst season in MLS history to take first place in the East and qualify for CCL. Montreal nearly repeated the feat in 2015, going from worst to 3rd and losing a wildly entertaining playoff series to the Columbus Crew in the Conference Semifinals. The Rapids in 2016 shrugged off years of irrelevancy to finish 2nd in the West and qualify for CCL.

A tale like this happens almost every year in MLS. As many as three teams (the Chicago Fire, Houston Dynamo, and San Jose Earthquakes) are threatening to make a similar move this year.

Is this movement random? Or are there common threads among these teams that can perhaps guide tomorrow’s perennial strugglers? And, most importantly, which turnarounds were sustainable?

Before starting to answer this question, I made a giant assumption to account for the unavoidable fact that MLS has changed drastically over the years. Rules, salaries, and roster mechanisms have fluctuated so much that following the example of a rebuild ten years ago probably wouldn’t help today. While it would be nice to figure out what happened to spark the 2000 Kansas City Wizards to go worst to first, I set the rebound season cut-off at 2010. That’s when teams were allowed to sign a third Designated Player.

Here are the teams who have experienced a major turnaround since 2010:

That’s one team a year, with some more dramatic than others. For example, the Dynamo only improved by 13 goals from 2010 to 2011, but they went from 2nd-worst in their conference to the MLS Cup Final (more on them in a second).

You may notice I didn’t include the 2013 Portland Timbers, who took first in the West after an atrocious 2012 season. They’re an interesting test case for other things but not necessarily rebuilding, since they were building for the first time. I also initially wasn’t going to include the 2013 Revs, but they’re an interesting example of that sustainability thing that this article is half about.

But what if a team just had a random year from hell? That Houston team, for example, went from no playoffs to the MLS Cup Final, but 2010 was the only year between 2006 and 2013 where they didn’t make the playoffs. So I’ll remove Houston from the list and add some teams that maybe never traversed the absolute depths but did go without playoffs for three or more years:

I realized I just said that this is about rebuilding and not building for the first time, but Toronto’s run of futility was so long that I had to include it. But Toronto-style rejuvenation is unlikely for teams like the San Jose Earthquakes and the Philadelphia Union.

Also, the Philly drought technically ended last year but they were the 6 seed in a 10-team conference, lost three more games than they won, allowed more goals than they scored, and lost immediately in the playoffs. For all intents and purposes, they’re still in slumpland.

So we have our list: 2016 Colorado, 2015 Montreal, 2014 and 2012 DC, 2013 New England, 2012 San Jose, and 2010 New York. Now, a quick summation of each comeback season, starting with the most recent team and going (mostly) from there:

2016 Colorado Rapids

In March 2014, the Rapids had let the first weekend of the season come and pass before naming Pablo Mastroeni their head coach. That season started off pretty well though. They hung around the playoff line for about the first half of the season, securing 30 points from their first 20 games. They then proceeded to pick up just two more over the final 14.

Mastroeni managed to keep his job after a full 2015 season in last place. The Colorado Rapids of February 2016 were a joke, as Rapids news would come up with the tag “Cololrado” on r/MLS. Tim Howard and Jermaine Jones were signed, but it was largely assumed that they existed merely to sell tickets.

While that may have been true, the rest of the team did pretty well around them. Albanian international Shkelzen Gashi ended up being a real offensive difference-maker. Axel Sjöberg, Bobby Burling, and Jared Watts combined to steady the centerback position. Dominique Badji and Marlon Hairston frightened defenses enough to give Gashi and once-underwhelming Kevin Doyle space.

By the end of the year, the Rapids had won enough 1–0 games to earn the 2-seed in the West. A Conference Finals loss to Seattle marked a disappointing end to an otherwise great season.

2015 Montreal Impact

A promising start to the 2013 Impact season included some pretty games against usually drab teams, like a 2–1 win against Sporting KC. But it sputtered to a halt in an embarrassing playoff game in Houston and head coach Marco Schallibaum was fired.

The 2014 team under Frank Klopas won six games and lost 18, with only mid-season acquisition Ignacio Piatti providing a spark for fans. The Impact did, however, win the 4-team Canadian Championship before bouncing the playoff-bound Red Bulls from CCL group play and advancing to the quarterfinals, to the chagrin of some MLS fans.

Little did we know that 2015 team’s ambition. Cameron Porter’s stoppage-time goal to beat Pachuca in the CCL Semifinals was the first of many highlights of the solid-before-spectacular Canadian side. Laurent Ciman transformed a leaky backline while Piatti terrorized young MLS fullbacks. Mid-season star acquisition Didier Drogba fueled MLS Cup hopes before Montreal succumbed to Columbus in a wildly entertaining conference semifinals series.

2014 DC United

The 2013 US Open Cup was a hilarious footnote to a pitiful season. Setting the MLS record for fewest wins and points-per-game, it was peculiar that Ben Olsen was allowed to continue fielding a team of players wearing “Tradition” on their collars. Well, maybe it wasn’t so peculiar since ownership had announced a new stadium halfway through the season and the money for it had to be found somewhere.

The front office was, at least, unwilling to run back the season and as such, armed with double allocation money, DC became one of the only teams in MLS history to make heavy use of the Re-Entry Draft. In came Houston centerback Bobby Boswell, LA fullback Sean Franklin, and RSL forward Fabian Espindola. Also in was #2 overall pick Steve Birnbaum, who slotted in next to Boswell earlier than expected.

The savvy veterans coalesced before too long and a winning team was born. Alas, the winning stopped in the Conference Semis against the hated Red Bulls, but it was all enough to improbably secure CCL qualification for a second straight year.

2013 New England Revolution

Despite the departure of Benny Feilhaber, Jay Heaps’s second season after the deposing of longtime Revs manager Steve Nicol went surprisingly well. Lee Nguyen stepped into the playmaker role and led the Revs to ten more goals than they scored in 2012. Diego Fagundez was starting to come into his own, as was Kelyn Rowe.

But the biggest change happened in the backline, as Jose Goncalves and 2013 #1 pick Andrew Farrell replaced A.J. Soares and Stephen McCarthy in central defense (Farrell is of course a fullback now). The addition of Jermaine Jones after 2013 would bring New England within a gasp of the 2014 title.

2012 DC United

By some measures, Ben Olsen’s second full season in charge was the most fruitful. It was Andy Najar’s last season with the club, Nick DeLeon’s first, and truly the first season that European speculation started to surround Bill Hamid and Perry Kitchen.

But one cannot talk about this DC United era without mentioning Dwayne De Rosario. A blockbuster trade involving Dax McCarty brought him to DC in the summer of 2011, where he promptly won an MVP award for a team that didn’t come close to making the playoffs.

2012 was different. De Rosario combined with Najar, DeLeon, Maicon Santos, Chris Pontius, and Danny Cruz to form a legitimately frightening black-and-red attack for the first time since Christian Gomez and Luciano Emilio ran the show. Halfway through the season, Cruz was traded for DC legend Lionard Pajoy and a month or two later, De Rosario went down at the beginning of Canada’s 8–0 loss to Honduras.

DC persevered, winning one-goal games with an empty bucket formation and Branko Boskovic stepping ably into DeRo’s shoes. The season ended when, even though DC was the higher seed, they had to travel to Houston and play the first leg of a conference finals series on three days’ rest without Hamid and Najar. But still, DC had a 1–0 lead in the dying minutes of the first half of that game until Andre Hainault didn’t get a red card for an obvious DOGSO.

2010 New York Red Bulls

As is often the case, the worst team in MLS didn’t get the #1 pick in the draft. As is also often the case, the Philadelphia Union didn’t know what they were doing and picked Danny Mwanga and some random Finn at the top of the 1st and 2nd rounds, leaving Tony Tchani and Tim Ream to the Red Bulls. New York got to add those two immediate standouts to Thierry Henry and Rafa Marquez to open their new stadium.

It turned out to be a sustainable approach because the Red Bulls have yet to miss the playoffs since. But it’s probably not repeatable. You don’t get to open a new stadium with new star players very often.

2012 San Jose Earthquakes

I left this one for the end because these Earthquakes are the epitome of the fluke year. No amount of centerbacks can really explain what happened at Buck Shaw in 2012. Chris Wondolowski, Steven Lenhart, and Alan Gordon just wouldn’t stop scoring.

These kinds of years can actually be really damaging long-term, especially if they don’t end in a title. Luckily, the Quakes did take home the Supporters’ Shield that year, though some 2012 fans may not have held that in as high esteem as we do today.

There is a real possibility that all of this is as random and fluky as that Quakes year. The correlation between payroll and league standing in MLS is hardly what it is in other leagues, which could easily breed randomness.

Another possibility: The last-place teams in top European leagues earn somewhere between 20 and 33 percent of the points earned by the league winners. Unless there’s a historically bad MLS team like 2013 DC United, that percentage is around 50.

Further, scoring eight more goals and conceding seven fewer goals than the previous season will usually put you into playoff contention, if not outright in, even if you finished in last place. A fifteen-goal swing from year to year is not terribly uncommon across world soccer:

15-Goal Improvements in MLS, EPL, Bundesliga, and Liga MX, Last Two Seasons

Indeed, MLS is tied for the fewest 15-goal shifts over the last two years with the Premier League (though it should be noted that both the Premier League and the Bundesliga play four more regular season games than MLS). But while a 15-goal Premiership shift is likely only to take you from out of relegation danger to the middle of the table, it often means going from bottom to top in MLS or Liga MX.

So in a sense, it’s almost a guarantee that at least one terrible MLS team every year will make the jump to title-contention.

So what common threads can we pull from these seasons, and how can we meaningfully pick out the flukes?

The Flukes: 2012 DC and San Jose, 2016 Colorado?

All these seasons share at least this common element: some key players randomly played above their heads for a season. Alan Gordon and Steven Lenhart have always been fine strikers in MLS, but never at the elite level displayed in 2012. Dejan Jakovic and Brandon McDonald, DC’s centerback pairing in 2012, had both been around for a few years. San Jose had cast off McDonald in favor of Victor Bernardez, while Jakovic had been beaten out in preseason by a Spaniard, Emiliano Dudar. This doesn’t necessarily mean both were bad players, just simply that they were probably league-average players enjoying above-average seasons. We can probably say the same about Bobby Burling, Axel Sjoberg’s partner last year.

We can also find some personnel losses that weren’t really ameliorated. DC lost Andy Najar and Branko Boskovic, which should have been fine. Najar was an offensive luxury, the thinking at the time went, along with Boskovic. It turned out they could have been essential, especially with that knee sprain taking a few steps away from DeRo.

The Rapids lost Jermaine Jones and, perhaps more importantly, willfully gave away fullback stalwart Marc Burch and midfield metronome Sam Cronin.

But the root of all three blip seasons seems to be the assumption that the players who exceeded expectations would continue to do so. It’s one thing if a young player does this, but it may be too much to expect players like McDonald, Gordon, and Burling to continue at a new higher level in their mid-20s to early-30s.

Rebuilds that stick

Centerbacks are, well, central to almost every turnaround. Teams that make their turnarounds permanent tend to go out and get new centerbacks. That’s what DC did with Birnbaum and Boswell, Montreal with Ciman, and New England with Goncalves and Farrell.

All turnaround contenders this year look good on that front. Florian Jungwirth is a contender for newcomer of the year in San Jose. Houston signed minutes leader Adalfo Machado while Chicago picked up Johan Kappelhof and Joao Meira and drafted fullbacks Jonathan Campbell and Brandon Vincent in the first round last year.

A new central midfield presence is usually required, though it can be subtle. New England brought in Scott Caldwell as their second homegrown (Fagundez was first) to shield the new pairing. Among the flurry of pickups for DC was Davy Arnaud, aging but solid box-to-box man. And amid Montreal’s season of struggles in 2014, Piatti was starting to earn results by himself.

Jahmir Hyka got lost in the shuffle among San Jose’s numerous international signings over the winter but he’s turned into the creator that’s taken pressure off both Wondolowski and Tommy Thompson.

Houston, on the other hand, simply blew past the midfield problem by bringing in Romell Quioto and Alberth Elis to run by everyone. If you’re looking for a regression candidate, Alex would be your man. He has six assists in just over 1,000 minutes of gameplay, which is two more than he’d compiled in more than 7,000 minutes over five combined seasons. But at the same time, Alex has never had such a prolific front line. And of course, Chicago’s solution to the central midfield problem was anything but subtle.

At this point, Rapids fans are probably saying to themselves, “Hey wait a minute, we got Sjoberg last year… he’s young and he was on the Best XI. And we brought in Shkelzen Gashi, doesn’t he create centrally?” Indeed, if the 2016 Colorado turnaround happens in 2012, the Rapids probably get one or two more playoff years out of their group.

But unfortunately, the best finisher Gashi has to create for is…himself. The consistent comeback teams find a good striker or two to milk for a few years. Lenhart and Gordon both scored double-digit goals in 2012. Only once in 20 combined non-2012 seasons has either even reached six goals. And Lionard Pajoy and Maicon Santos weren’t going to combine for even three goals after 2012, much less 15.

Juan Agudelo proved to be the final piece for a promising New England attack that featured Nguyen, Rowe, and Fagundez. Eddie Johnson didn’t make much of an impact for 2014 DC, but Espindola certainly did, as did mid-season acquisition Chris Rolfe. And of course, Montreal picked up this Didier Drogba dude.

At this juncture, we have a rudimentary model. Teams that improve because players up the middle performed better for a year are more likely to regress. This model offers one clear testable hypothesis: team success is more sustainable when it corresponds with a relative influx of new players.

I tested my hypothesis on the above test cases by computing the year-to-year percentage (or share) of minutes played by returning players over a four year span (where year 3 is the turnaround year):

Compiled from the MLSsoccer.com stats page

Three of the four consistent teams massively overhauled their roster in their breakthrough season. The fascinating exception is New England, which we may have to ponder later.

Meanwhile, San Jose kept their roster pretty consistent from 2010 through 2013, whereas 2012 DC and 2016 Colorado experienced their biggest reshuffles a year before the fun began. This is by no means conclusive, but it is a good start, and for the most part follows what we tracked earlier.

Why is that? I can only speculate, but as a sports fan of over 20 years, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve talked myself into a team of mine improving without adding any pieces because I misinterpreted a breakout season. For example, raise your hand if you’re a Carolina Panthers fan and you assumed that the 2016 defense would still be great without Josh Norman. (Keep them up, all of Charlotte. Wait, I have to finish this article, okay hands down everyone).

It seems like actual sports teams, including those in MLS, fall into similar traps. It’s understandable. Sports teams, after all, are organizations mostly run by people, and people like to keep doing things that work for them. If a team starts to succeed because they acquired/bought/developed a bunch of new, better players, they’re likely to continue that.

If, on the other hand, players start performing unexpectedly well, internal talk may turn to how “the system” is simply working better here than it is in other places.

So finally, how are this year’s breakthrough candidates faring on that front? It’s an incomplete look but:

Chicago and San Jose’s totals should both go down as the season goes along and players like Nemanja Nikolic, Bastian Schweinsteiger, and Jahmir Hyka see the field more often. It’s clear, though, that roster overhaul parties have gone down in the lands of Earthquakes, Fire, and Energy. That’s a good long-term sign.

Now this isn’t to say every roster overhaul will result in resurgence. Chivas USA brought in a brand new group of promising players almost every year to no avail. And for years, Chicago and San Jose were bringing in international players almost at random.

But it is probably a better plan than hoping to strike fools’ gold on the one season your roster outperforms expectation.