Armchair Analyst: On the radar for Week 16 of the 2015 MLS season

We step back from the Magic of the Cup and step back into the real, long, grueling grind that is the MLS season. All while bearing in mind that injury, suspension and international duty loom for a goodly slice of the league's best players.

So what's past is prologue and what's to come isn't necessarily predictive.

On to the games:

1. Waiting For the Sun

Every Sunday I write my wrap-up of the previous week's MLS action, and every Sunday I face at least a few tweets/comments from FC Dallas fans wanting to know why I haven't taken a longer, more thorough look at this team.

My answer is simple: There's not much different about this current Dallas slide (they've taken two of the last 15 points on offer), not much to distinguish it from the springtime lulls they've hit in each of the past two seasons. The defense has been pretty decent; the goalkeeping verges from "adequate" to "very good," and the chance creation plummets off a cliff.

And there lies the one difference. In the past two years, the Dallas attack dried up – or at the very least, became one dimensional – when Mauro Díaz hit the sideline. But the problem is that The Magic Little Unicorn^TM is still out on the field in 2015, and he's not so magical these days.

Thing is, though, it's not all his fault. Watch this play:

This is a nice back-to-front build-up from last month, but it breaks down after the excellent check into space and lay-off from Blas Pérez. The first thing that goes wrong is that the left fullback hasn't pushed up past the midfield stripe to offer an attacking threat or, at the very least, an outlet in possession. That basically forces Díaz to think "go directly to goal."

The second problem is that Díaz goes directly to goal. He tries a one-time, outside-of-the-boot chip to a guy making a diagonal run into help – a very, very low-percentage play – instead of staying on the ball, driving at the defense and either beating his man or forcing a foul.

Dribbling is not usually the best move if you're going by the numbers, but in this case it was called for. All season in these spots, Díaz has been shy, and Oscar Pareja has noticed. Díaz needed to be more aggressive there.

Also: Refs have to be willing to call more fouls. By the time of that clip above, Díaz had been hacked down six times, and Montreal would get him twice more before the final whistle. No persistent infringement yellow was shown, and if teams can get away with kicking Díaz (or Darlington Nagbe or Lee Nguyen or Pedro Morales or any of the other surfeit of talented playmakers in MLS) out of the game, they will do so.

Colorado will be next in line to try to disrupt Díaz when they host Dallas Friday night (9 pm ET, UniMás, UDN, UnivisionDeportes.com, match preview).

I'll also be watching…Luis Solignac got an assist for the Rapids on Tuesday against Colorado Springs in the Open Cup and has looked fairly good so far. Now he needs to start finishing.

2. Tell All the People

Usually when a 4-3-3 or a 4-2-3-1 team goes up against a 4-4-2 team, they try to attack up the middle. This is not some absolute, just a case of taking the road most traveled.

D.C. United, however, aren't a regular 4-4-2 team. They play their wide midfielders narrower than almost anyone and pull at least one of their forwards back into midfield to prevent the opposition from cruising right down Love Street.

It works. There's a reason why D.C. once again have one of the league's best defenses and, subsequently, best records. But there are times in every match when this game plan forces each or both of United's fullbacks to defend on an island, and leaks have recently been sprung:

That goal isn't all about Sebastian Giovinco putting Sean Franklin in the torture chamber. It's about D.C.'s fullbacks on both sides pushing up and out of the play, unable to deal with a quick transition in the other direction that leaves Luke Moore in Zone 14 with a nice pass to pick out.

They're going against a New England team on Sunday (5 pm ET, ESPN2, ESPN Deportes, WatchESPN, TSN2, match preview) that is perhaps the most ruthless in the league at punishing fullbacks that come unstuck in time and space.

I'll also be watching …Charlie Davies is giving a weekly clinic on how to be a center forward. Fundamentally, his runs are so sound, and his movement is so smart.

3. The Soft Parade

When we've talked about Real Salt Lake this year, we've mostly focused on players that have gone missing for one reason or another. Ned Grabavoy, Chris Wingert and Nat Borchers are wearing different colors; Kyle Beckerman, Jordan Allen and Nick Rimando have had international workloads; seemingly most of the rest of the roster has missed time with one injury or another.

What's not talked about enough is that certain parts of this team may have just gotten old. Rimando hasn't really been himself this year, and Jamison Olave is breaking down by the week. Javier Morales is somehow still as good as he was at 28, but Beckerman is now being asked to cover more ground in the midfield and hasn't been all that pleased about it.

For my money, though, nobody's showing more wear and tear than center forward Álvaro Saborío. He's played nearly as many minutes as last year, and while he's getting as much of the ball as usual:

*EDIT: I had initially mislabeled the years in the above table. Sorry for the confusion and thanks to the commenters below for the pro bono proofreading

He's turning it over almost 20 percent more often. It's hard to be a possession team when you your forward line gives the ball away that much.

Saborío's 33, and he's learning a new system and the tendencies of new teammates, and there are tons of other mitigating factors. But the numbers back up the eye test: This isn't the same Sabo.

RSL will try to put it all together on Sunday night (10 pm ET; FOX Sports 1, FOX Deportes, match preview) against a Sporting Kansas City team that's arguably been the league's best over the past month.

I'll also be watching … Late last month it looked like the SKC front line of Graham Zusi - Dom Dwyer - Krisztián Németh finally clicked. Then Dwyer got hurt and Németh went out on international duty, and we haven't had a chance to see them since. That changes on Sunday.

Happy weekend, everybody.