The 2016 Portland Timbers: A Tale of Two Seasons

The 2016 season was a highly anticipated one for the Portland Timbers. The team was coming off of its first MLS Cup in club history, which was the first major trophy of any kind for the MLS era Portland Timbers and the first league championship for any Timbers team in history.

There was a lot of hype around the team as they were hoping to keep the MLS Cup in the Pacific Northwest, and the trophy would remain in Cascadia in 2016. The only problem was that it traveled 173 miles up I-5 into enemy territory. But, this article is not meant to complain about the success of the Seattle Sounders; rather, it aims to explore the bizarreness of the 2016 Timbers season.

The Timbers were virtually unbeatable at home in 2016, winning 12 games, earning 2 draws, and losing just 3 times. When you look at that, you would think that the Timbers had a very successful season and would enter the MLS Cup Playoffs as a serious contender to defend their title. There was just one problem, though.

The Timbers struggled significantly away from Providence Park. Their performance on the road was dismal, with their lone away win in any competitive match that season coming against Salvadoran club CD Dragon in the CONCACAF Champions League–a tournament they qualified for due to winning MLS Cup 2015. During the 2016 MLS season, the Timbers lost 11 times on the road, drew 6 matches, and failed to secure a single win. Portland’s head coach at the time, Caleb Porter, described 2016 as “a tale of two seasons”.

The Timbers finished 7th in the Western Conference, missing the playoffs by two points. If the Timbers had managed to win just once away from home, they would have made the playoffs. Of course, it’s expected for any team to perform better at home than on the road but a huge difference like this is unexpected. You would expect a team that didn’t win a single match away from home to be near the bottom of the standings and not just a few points out of a playoff spot. On the contrary, you would expect a team with such a great home record to at least be a playoff team.

At Providence Park, the Timbers beat the Seattle Sounders, the eventual MLS Cup winners, not once but twice. In addition, they defeated the eventual Eastern Conference champions Toronto FC along with several other formidable opponents. These wins showed that the Timbers were capable of competing with the league’s top teams as long as they had the Timbers Army behind them.

There were several away games where the Timbers had second half leads, including games against the LA Galaxy and New England Revolution where they had 1-0 leads in both of those games undone by late own goals, leading to 1-1 draws on both occasions. They also got a few impressive 0-0 draws on the road against the New York Red Bulls and Colorado Rapids, two of the top teams in the standings that season. But, they had some bad losses to bottom teams that year like the Houston Dynamo and San Jose Earthquakes.

2016 was a wacky season for the Portland Timbers and they seemed like two entirely different teams depending on whether they were at home or on the road. The Timbers Army was the only thing keeping this team in the playoff race until the very end. But, they were unable to get to the playoffs, becoming the first MLS Cup winners in a decade to miss the playoffs the following season.