Analyzing Heitz’s Four Seasons, Part I: The Results
The Fire’s loss on Decision Day gave them an ignominious honor: They now have the longest active playoff drought in the league and are the sole owners of the second-longest playoff drought in league history at six seasons, following only Toronto FC’s eight season stretch from 2007-2014.
The chance of them having missed the playoffs every year from 2018-2023, as they have? About 0.54%. That is a 1-in-185 chance.
In a league built on parity, that makes the Fire not only bad, it makes them remarkably bad. Unique, even, in league history, as the only non-expansion team to ever miss the playoffs six years in a row.
While the Fire’s drought spans multiple owners, club executives, and head coaches, the majority of the team’s futile streak has been under the oversight of Sporting Director Georg Heitz, who took the reins of the club in December 2019.
MenInRed97 has compiled data from multiple sources to analyze the team’s performance over the past four seasons compared with other teams in MLS.
Performing Below Expectations
Reviewing the FIre’s results over the past few years makes it clear how much the team has underperformed expectations.
Over the past four seasons, the Fire have won just 34 times, good for 27.2% of their games, tying them with Houston for 27th-best in the league and ahead only of Toronto FC (at 25.6%). During that span, the Fire managed only two more wins than Toronto, who won only four times this season en route to winning the Wooden Spoon for the league’s worst record.
That puts the Fire far behind league-leading St. Louis, who won 50% of their games in their first and only season in the league (admittedly, a number that is likely to trend down as they play more games), as well as league powerhouses like Philadelphia (second at 49.6%), Los Angeles FC (third at 45.2%), Orlando (4th, 44.8%) and New England (5th, 45.1%).
Not only has the team failed to win games, but they have been laggards in most of the components required to do so, like goal scoring or defense, that would suggest (at a high level) that the team are close to playing winning soccer.
The Fire scored 147 goals in the past four seasons, tied for fewest (with Toronto) amongst teams that competed in all four seasons, and allowed 192 during that span, good for 21st in the 29-team league (and only 26 of those teams competed in all four seasons). That gives the Fire a goal differential of -45, tied with San Jose and ahead only of Toronto (-70), D.C. United (-53) and Miami (-49).
Unsurprisingly, given the team’s win percentage, they have the 24th most points in that span and again are ahead only of Toronto (128 points) and D.C. United (135 points) amongst non-expansion teams that competed in all four seasons.
Remarkable Consistency Across Four Seasons
While the Fire’s results may not have been impressive over the past four seasons, the consistency certainly has been.
In both 2020 and 2021, the team averaged exactly 1.0 points per game before improving - slightly - to 1.15 points per game in 2022 and 1.18 points per game this past season. The chart below shows each MLS team by average points per game (PPG) over the past four seasons.
Other than St. Louis (who have competed in only a single season), no other team has as narrow of a range of results as the Fire over the past few years, with a best-to-worst difference of just 0.176 points per game. Only Nashville (a range of 0.197) comes close, but Nashville has been consistently better, having made the playoffs all four seasons of the club’s existence.
Other teams with narrow ranges have typically been borderline playoff teams, like Vancouver (0.267 point range, two playoff appearances), the San Jose Earthquakes (0.275, two appearances), or the New York Red Bulls (0.294 range, four appearances). Those teams are all considered relatively unambitious in MLS, and they all rank 20th or below for average spend over the past four years (see below). They are generally clubs that have decided to embrace mediocrity, hoping that making the playoffs, often as a lower seed, will give them a chance at a run and possibly give their fans something to remember.
While 12 teams had a season where they averaged 1.0 PPG or less, most also had seasons with considerably better results. The chart below lists those 12 teams, ordered by average PPG over the past four seasons.
Exactly one point per game may seem like an arbitrary number, but it is the exact average the Fire made in both 2020 and 2021 and seems as good of a mark as any to indicate a season where results are few and far between, giving fans little to cheer for throughout the season.
No team in the league has had a larger performance delta than FC Cincinnati, who had the league’s worst record in 2020 and 2021 before making the playoffs in 2022 and winning the Supporter’s Shield for the team with the best record in 2023.
They are one of several teams to have had significant swings in fortune on the list, which, alongside Cincinnati’s Supporters Shield, includes the trophy-winning Houston Dynamo (U.S. Open Cup 2023), Toronto FC (Canadian Championship 2020), and Inter Miami (Leagues Cup 2023). The Colorado Rapids topped the Western Conference standings in 2021. Of teams on the list that did not win a trophy, Austin (2023), Colorado (2022), and Atlanta (2021) all earned CONCACAF Champions League spots in that span, and Real Salt Lake made it as far as the MLS Cup conference finals (2021).
Of the teams that had a 1.0-PPG-or-less season in the last four, only the Fire, D.C. United, FC Dallas, and L.A. Galaxy did not get to hoist a trophy, make a deep playoff run, or earn continental play in the last four seasons, giving their fans something to cheer for. (FC Dallas did make the conference semifinals in 2020.)
Several of the teams on the ranking above followed up their worst season with their best, including Austin, Atlanta United, and FC Dallas. Every team on the list had a season with a significantly higher points average than Chicago’s high water mark of 1.18, including D.C. United (1.38 in 2021) and Inter Miami (who had averaged 1.41 points this season but have since made some roster changes you might have heard something about).
The Fire, however, have had no such rebound, and four years into Heitz’s tenure, have yet to match the 42 points and eighth-place finish they enjoyed in 2019, the year before he came to Chicago (the team also scored 55 goals that season; their highest tally since then is 39).
Big Spend, Little Results
Even if the Fire have had mediocre results under Heitz, the team has excelled in one area: Spending owner Joe Mansueto’s money.
Based on data from the MLS Players Association, which includes salary and other guaranteed compensation (e.g. signing bonuses), but not performance bonuses or transfer fees, the team has spent $65.44 million over the past four years on wages, the sixth-highest sum in the league, averaging out to $16.36 million per year (also 6th).
Every one of the teams that has a higher average spend than the Fire has made the playoffs at least once in that span, all but two (Toronto, L.A. Galaxy) have made the playoffs at least twice. Those teams combined have a total of four trophies in that span (Toronto, 2020 Canadian Championship; Inter Miami, 2023 Leagues Cup; LAFC, 2022 MLS Cup and Supporters Shield). Of the clubs that spent more than the Fire, Toronto, which had the highest average spend, has been the least successful in that span but still came within three points of the Supporters Shield in 2020.
The high spend combined with the disappointing results on the pitch have had a predictable result: Per point in the standings, the Fire’s spend has been incredibly ineffective at producing results.
One way to look at the effectiveness of roster spending is to look at points per dollar spent, though for the sake of scale, it’s easiest to look at points per million dollars spent. (By adjusting points with total spend, which is inherently annual, there is no need to correct for the three expansion teams with this statistic.)
By that measure, the Fire are 26th in the 29-team league, earning just 2.08 points per million dollars on the roster spent over the past four seasons. That is just 40.6% of the production per dollar that value-leading Philadelphia (who lead the league in overall points over the past four seasons, with 223) have been able to earn.
Philadelphia (#1 in points-per-dollar) is one of four clubs that have made the playoffs all of the past four seasons, and all of them are in the top 10 in this ranking, including Orlando (4.51 points per $1m, #3), the New York Red Bulls (4.49, #4), and Nashville (3.50, #9). Consistent spending is not a predictor of consistent success in this league; if anything, it’s the opposite.
Of the teams below the Fire in points-per-spend, the Galaxy have been plagued by injury woes amongst their most expensive players (notably Chichario, who left the team following the 2023 season). Inter Miami have significantly increased their roster spend in the middle of the last season and did not get to enjoy the full results of that increase, and Toronto have been widely cited as an example of wasteful, ineffective spending en route to winning the Wooden Spoon this year.
Regardless of how you count it, the Fire have been in the bottom tier of the league in terms of results, while being in the top tier of spending. While Toronto may be keeping them company as high-spending teams with poor results, the Fire are alone amongst them in teams to have failed to make the playoffs in that span.
This concludes Part I of the series. Check back tomorrow for Part II, which dives into roster construction over the past four seasons.
