The Morning After: Should you worry that Austin FC is on pace for a 17-goal season?

Austin FC head coach Nico Estévez tasked himself with engineering better production in the final third following his team's generally positive yet concerning opening day 1-0 win over Sporting Kansas City.

In the moments following finishing on the losing end of a 1-0 scoreline against the Portland Timbers on Saturday night, Estévez once again took ownership over the squad's scoring paucity, concluding a thoughtful answer about what led to that with a simple, "La culpa es mía." ("It's my fault.")

In his Spanish-language answer to We Are Austin TV's Alex Sanabria, he pointed out that Brandon Vázquez didn't get many opportunities to receive the ball and score — though his 34th-minute free kick was arguably Verde's best chance of the match, and that Myrto Uzuni "only managed three touches on the ball in 30 minutes," (only one of those coming in the Timbers' box, according to FotMob), which has as much to do with the players being slow acclimating with one another (so far) as it does with how the Timbers defended.

"The blame is entirely mine because it's my responsibility to ensure that everyone knows what will happen when the game starts ... I changed the game in a way different from how we had prepared during the week, and that's likely to have hurt the players who came in," Estévez assessed. "When they made their entry, we changed, and the game started to slip out of our control; it opened up for them. That's when they become strong; they thrive on that. They aim to create chaos and find opportunities to exploit. In my eagerness to regain control of the match, I inadvertently hindered our attackers."

He did, in response to my question about final third action, cite a few good opportunities that Verde engineered, but noted, "We have to be more consistent on those plays."

It's a small sample size, but ...

One connected pair of stats best exemplifies where Austin FC stands after two matches this season.

They have yet to concede a goal from open play, but they also have failed to scored a goal from open play.

In Saturday's match, all four of Verde's shots on target (from 11 total shots) came from outside the 18, for a combined expected goals (xG) of .11 (per FBref), though Vázquez's free kick had the second-best post-shot xG of the night at 0.15. (The best came in the 5th minute, when Brad Stuver saved a short-range Felipe Mora shot in his best moment of the match.)

Here's what Verde's shot map looked like, courtesy of MLS Analytics. (The open circles are shots on target; the shaded circles are shots off target.)

It's similar to what Austin managed against SKC, although Portland and Austin had about the same average height of defensive action, higher than Austin faced against SKC in the opener.

It wasn't the most anemic offensive performance of the evening — St. Louis City SC, who Austin faces March 30, only registered two total shots (though both on target!) and a lackluster 0.09 xG in a 0-0 draw against San Diego FC in the expansion franchise's first-ever home match. (Sorry to you fans who paid a lot of money to see that!)

But, with Saturday's matches in the books, Austin is starting 2025 as it started 2024 – at the bottom of the league in a few key offensive metrics.

Again, to give a cautionary tale about xG and the more telling non-penalty expected goals (npxG), it's a better measure of what a team does the deeper into a season one goes, and it's a measure of quality times quantity, not just quality.

But Austin's currently 25th in npxG per 90, and two of the teams below them are teams they played in what could be characterized (euphemistically, perhaps) as defense-dominant matches.

In an indication of how much this early part of the schedule should favor Austin, three of the teams they'll face in the next month are currently 20th or lower in npxG per 90. By April, they'll start going up against teams that are so far generating considerably more and better chances – putting the defense to appreciably sterner tests, as well as putting Estévez's reassurances about chemistry developing over time under more scrutiny.

Is optimism dead?

Perhaps our predictions on the most recent Emergency Podcast about a 5-1-1 or 4-1-2 start after the first seven matches of 2025 were too optimistic? We could hardly be blamed for predicting a win on Saturday: Portland was missing a few of its best players on Saturday and David Da Costa was only starting his first match for the Timbers.

That he went as long as he did – subbing off in stoppage time, but staying in long enough to deliver the late devastating free kick that gave the hosts all three points – was surprising in itself.

"It's a difficult situation from both the defensive side and from a goalkeeper side, because when there's just a little bit of indecisiveness on who takes it and also expectation that somebody will touch it on that cross, I think it becomes nearly impossible to react to the last second where the ball bounces — the placement of the ball, the speed of the ball," Brendan Hines-Ike said after the match.

"It's a very difficult situation to deal with. In hindsight, we said, you know, perhaps the line can be a foot higher to be even with the wall, just to give a little bit more of a cushion for Brad, but also just for us to have more space. But, yeah, it's one of those things where we'll look at it, analyze it, and it's a shame that that's where the goal comes from, obviously."

If there's a positive takeaway from this match, it's that Austin players knew they should have at least gotten a result Saturday night, and they'll have a chance to exert payback on April 5 at Q2 Stadium when the teams meet again.

"I think everybody in the locker room felt after the game, from the way the game went, that was completely undeserving for Portland to win the game in the way they did," Hines-Ike observed. "I think everybody felt we were the better team. I think that we felt that we were in control of the game for most of the aspects, and even for them, I think they'll understand that it's going to be a much more difficult challenge to come to Austin with our fans, with our energy.

"The home games are the ones you go after, and you know that you have to get results for," he added, in an MLS adage we all grew far too accustomed to hearing last season. "So I think it will be, yes, revenge in our minds. But I think more it's a focus on ourselves and knowing that we are a very good team, and we should be able to take care of those teams at home with the right game plan pretty much every single week."

So far, the defense has been up to the test, save for one major lapse 88 1/2 minutes into their first road match.

But also, so far, the offense has generated some intriguing sparks, but precious little else. Indeed, with the players brought in during the offseason, that dynamic could be on the cusp of changing. That's what the coach brought in during the offseason has been pledging.

Until it does, though, this start to the season could be quickly turning from how 2022 felt to how 2024 felt.

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