NWSL Week 13 preview: Houston hope to break free of their slump

Looking at the bottom of the NWSL table, it’s easy to let your eye go right to the minus-22 that is Boston’s goal differential. It’s a big, bad number, and it’s indicative of the season that the team it belongs to is having. That the Breakers are bad, that they’re not going to make the playoffs, that a second win may never come are all real things. And to be caught up in that line on the table -- the one that shows four points in 12 games, a 1-10-1 record, four goals scored, 26 against -- you will get sad. And so you’ll be sad, and then you’ll have to close that tab and go watch Cats Scared of Cucumbers Compilation for the 400th time to feel better.

Okay. Ready? Houston: seven points in 10 games, a 2-7-1 record, six goals for, and the one marshmallow in this defective box of Lucky Charms, only 11 goals against. Feel better? Worse? I’ll give you four minutes and 26 seconds to recover.

The first year, the before, was Houston’s first season in the NWSL. It was 2014, and the then-expansion Dash finished, perhaps unsurprisingly, dead last. A dismal 5-16-3 record and a league-low 23 goals scored landing the league’s newest team at the bottom of the table at season’s end.

On paper, that version of the Dash looked miles better than the one that had entered the league as an expansion team the year before. And for more than half the season, those on-paper good looks were playing out on the field, too. Houston lost just four times through the first 14 games of the 2015 season, putting the Dash in a good position to fight for a spot in the top four. Even without Lloyd, Klingenberg, Brian and McLeod, who all missed significant time due to the World Cup, Houston looked poised to earn a postseason berth. And then the Dash lost four times in a row, sliding down the table just as the season was wrapping up. Ultimately, the team finished in fifth, four points shy of the final playoff spot.

The standards for a turnaround in the NWSL get a little skewed when you’ve got the footsteps of teams like Seattle and Washington to follow in, but really, ninth to fifth as an expansion team isn’t terrible -- with a few more tweaks to the roster and more availability from the international players, the future was bright. The third season would be, finally, the year of the Dash.

When the 2016 season kicked off, it was indeed with a statement game from Houston. The Dash beat Chicago 3-1, getting big performances from not only Lloyd, but also rookies Janine Beckie and Rachel Daly, who both scored in their NWSL debuts. It was only one game into the season, but the Dash looked like they could be one of the teams to beat. They’d have to contend with some losses for the Olympics, but so would everyone else and the Dash had planned ahead, making a few offseason acquisitions, building a deeper bench and keeping a solid core of non-national team players around from previous seasons. And for at least the first part of the season, they also had a not-so secret weapon in Lloyd, who looked every bit like (the good parts of) her World Cup winning self.

It was in the seventh minute of the game in Orlando that Lloyd walked off the field during a stoppage in play. It happens near the bottom of the picture on the YouTube stream and Lloyd leaves the field so casually that if you’re not looking for it, you probably wouldn’t even notice. She made some awkward contact with the ball a few minutes before, something that had initially looked pretty harmless, but quickly turned serious. Lloyd, the player that had carried the U.S. to a World Cup title and was set to do the same for her club team, was next spotted by the cameras getting treatment on the sidelines, then subbed out in the 13th minute. Just down the street from the Happiest Place on Earth, the Dash was having a sad day. Now, Lloyd has recovered, but Houston definitely hasn’t.

By the time Houston took the field last weekend in New Jersey, the Dash already lost five straight games, all of them 1-0. By the time Houston left the field 90 minutes later, that number was at six. When Houston takes the field against Portland on Saturday, they will have not scored a goal in 560 minutes. Portland, one of the best defensive teams in the league, is probably not the team you want to be playing when you haven’t scored a goal in span of time that’s longer than it would take to listen to all of the music on a full iPod Shuffle.

Houston, because of a game that had to be rescheduled due to weather, has played at least one fewer game than everyone else in the league, making this weekend the official beginning of the second half of the Dash’s season. But the ten games the Dash has remaining aren’t easy ones. The three left before the Olympic break are against Portland, Chicago and Western NY -- three of the league’s top teams -- and the Dash is now without seven players due to international duty.

There are a few bright spots, the biggest being that despite those six straight losses, Houston is one of the better defensive teams in the league. Remember, all of those losses were 1-0, which is hardly the blowout kind of stuff that’s sent the Breakers into some kind of endless spiral. Goalkeeper Bianca Henninger, who made her season debut last weekend with Lydia Williams away with Australia, made several key saves and is a veteran presence. Daly, though still looking for her second goal, is adjusting well and fellow rookie Cari Roccaro has had a solid season in Houston’s back line.

Will Houston make the playoffs? Probably not, but the Dash can still salvage something from this season. Though it’s been a while since the Dash last won, they’ve been in every game, a single goal away from turning it around. And maybe, from turning the season around.