Over the course of a full season, injury, rest and on-field performance pull players in and out of the starting lineup.
But most seasons, you can find a player who is a permanent fixture in the team, someone whose play is reliable and who is physically durable.
This season, Danny Griffin has become that player for the Hounds.
Griffin is the only player to have started all 16 games this season for the Hounds, a streak that will extend to 17 when the team faces the Charleston Battery at 7:30 tonight on ESPN+ and Sirius/XM Channel 157. Griffin has played 1,427 minutes, with the only time he missed coming when the Hounds already held a 3-1 lead at New York.
“I was surprised, but I knew I was on a yellow that game, as well,” Griffin said. “Every second, every minute, I just want to do what I can for the team. It’s up to the boss how long I play, but I just want to do what I can for the team.”
So what has the second-year pro out of Providence — a second-round MLS SuperDraft pick who went unsigned by the Columbus Crew — done to make him so irreplaceable in Bob Lilley’s lineup?
First of all, Griffin has stepped up to occupy a position that is critical to how Lilley wants his teams to defend. As one of two, or sometimes as the only holding midfielder, Griffin’s role is to disrupt opposing attacks and afford a level of protection to the center backs behind him. That allows the back four or five players to stay compact and in a line, not allowing gaps to form.
To that end, the numbers reflect Griffin’s effectiveness. He leads the team with 30 interceptions, is second on the club in duels won with 77 and third on the team in tackles won with 21.
The second part of his job, helping the team transition from defense to attack, is a high-volume role — he leads the team with 748 total passes — but Griffin’s emergence has allowed Lilley to deploy Kenardo Forbes, who often played that role in previous season, in a more attacking manner during the team’s recent 7-1-1 run.
“(I’ve) definitely made strides forward, and I’m just working on that consistency and improving little aspects of my game that coach has been on me for since I first set foot in this building,” Griffin said. “(I’m) just continuing to improve in those levels, and I see myself doing the same for the next 16 games.”
A look at usage in past seasons shows just how important a reliable holding midfielder is to Lilley’s teams.
Last season, Thomas Vancaeyezeele often played a similar role or was used as a more traditional center back. He played every minute of the pandemic-shortened season, making him the only Hounds player to do so.
In 2019, Forbes held that role and appeared in every game. He played 2,804 of a possible 3,060 minutes, which was just 43 minutes short of Tobi Adewole’s team high. The year before, Lilley’s first in Pittsburgh, it was Vancaeyezeele again leading the team with 2,909 minutes and Forbes second with 2,637, and each of those players missed just one match.
It takes a special knack to play so many minutes in such a physically demanding, box-to-box role, but Lilley excels at finding players who can do it. Consider that in the six years prior to Lilley’s arrival, the Hounds minutes leaders were nearly always players who spent more of their time in attacking roles (Kevin Kerr, Corey Hertzog and Rob Vincent) or true defenders (Andrew Marshall, Sterling Flunder), with only Danny Earls in 2014 leading the team in minutes while playing a similar, hard-nosed box-to-box midfield spot.
At this point, Griffin has to be considered the favorite to lead the Hounds in minutes in 2021, as the 23-year-old clearly has Lilley’s trust to play the pivotal role. And while Griffin might not put up the scoring numbers of other players or make as many highlight reels as the team’s other Danny, goalkeeper Danny Vitiello, his performance might be the most important to the Hounds’ hopes of winning the Atlantic Division.