Pinzone: Margin Call

Caleb Porter and the Revs have been on the wrong side of some very narrow margins far too often...

Photo By J. Alexander Dolan

Caleb Porter reached the 40 game mark of MLS games coached with the New England Revolution. The most recent Revs game followed a familiar pattern with many of the same trends established in the previous 39 games.

All of which hasn’t panned out in the Revs favor anywhere near often enough, the 1-0 loss to Cincinnati was the 25th of Porter’s tenure. They’ve won just 10 in those 40 games. The majority of those games were in 2024, it’s a largely new team, as we’ve heard many many times already but the Caleb Porter model has remained the same.

It’s a model that by design means games will be decided by narrow margins because when it works it limits both the opponent’s and the Revs own ceiling for scoring goals. It reduces the chances for the opponent to score by preferring to defend with everyone or nearly everyone behind the ball which also means the Revs are limited in their counter attacking opportunities. The attacking play is also far too often far too slow, too side to side, too risk adverse. That gives it an air of being a safe model, after all, it’s low risk in all phases. But that itself is too risky.

You need a model that does take risks and hedges against the risks you take. A team sits deep and defends in numbers, making most of its defensive actions 30-35 yards from goal. The risk there is too much time spent defending hurts you eventually. The hedge? Rapid counterattacks, expose the space left by the opponent you’ve invited forward. Or a team presses fanatically high and in great numbers, a risk of being over exposed. But the hedge is two-fold, one the chances created from the fanatical press can produce goals in a single pass or two. Second, being just as unrelenting to give the ball away once you have it.

Porter’s model doesn’t take risks like the above. So what makes it risky? We’ve seen it 40 times now, the game is almost always going to come down to very slim margins.

A penalty given or not given, a post hit or not hit, a single shot taken or not taken. His model produces so few moments of consequence that the consequential moments are massively influential in the outcome of the game.

How many times have we heard how close the Revs were to a getting a point on the road or a win at home, if only just this or just that.

And we remember those moments and dwell on them during the week. This week it’s the two posts that were hit and a penalty not given for a handball. This way of existing in the narrow margins of the type of games the Revs play hasn’t worked. Too often they end up on the wrong side of those margins.

What does the best-case scenario for this model look like? We’ve seen it already.

Last season’s much heralded four game winning streak. Every game won in that streak was by a single goal, the Revs had one multiple goal win in all of 2024. That has continued this year, the only win was 2-1 with a 95th minute penalty.

Last season, though there was a glitch in the model, the defense didn’t do its part in keeping the margins narrow. The Revs expected goals difference per game was -.76. The expected goals allowed per game was 1.84. Needless to say, that xG margin was the worst in the Eastern Conference last year. But even if you replace last year’s xG allowed per game rate with 2025’s rate of 1.21 and apply it to all of 2024 you still get a xG difference per game of -.12. That would have been one of five negative xG differences in the conference along with Chicago, Nashville, Montreal and Toronto. Three of those four missed the playoffs.

Any model with such narrow margins, be it a playing or trading model, needs someone who can make in the moment, tactical decisions to win the game or finish the day in the black more often than not. You need a decisive, calculating operator, making the right moves at the right time. You need to be the MLS version of John Mack, someone who can smell blood in the water and go for the kill.

Caleb Porter hasn’t shown he can manage a game with his subs, tactical changes or whatever it is that goes on at halftime in the Revs locker room. The Revs make just three subs per game on average, second lowest in MLS. The bottom team is Columbus, who are undefeated.

Not much reason to change things up when you don’t lose games. The Revs, of course, are typically operating on the other side of that. And there is seemingly almost always a lot more being adjusted in the opponent’s locker room based on Andy Judd’s calculations below.

Porter then becomes a victim of his own approach. At his best, he creates a dull affair devoid of consequences for either team, meaning those moments have out sized influence when they happen. He can’t bend the margins to his team’s will either, he just exists in the narrow spaces between success and failure.

And when the final whistle goes, the only time where it truly matters what side of the trade you’re on, the Revs are the wrong one, in the red.

The Revs and Curt Onalfo doubled down on Porter and this model in 2025 after deciding it could still work despite 2024’s evidence. This doubling down on a model that had went the wrong way was similar to what befell Long Term Capital Management in the 1990s. They had a trading model they were convinced would work because it had worked in the past and that would always come good. When their model stopped working, their bravado, their faith in the model caused them to not only stick with it but double down on what was becoming a bad trade. In the end, they couldn’t escape the depths their model had plunged them too. Long Term Capital Management was no more, doomed by their blind faith to a model no longer functioning.

Caleb Porter’s model worked with Portland, it worked briefly in Columbus, it won’t work again. He’s doubled down on it this year, as has the team. He’s used up all his capital, tossed in all his collateral and tried to ride it out, but it’s time for the house to call.