Week 5 in Major League Soccer brought a merciful reprieve from a real downer of a trend: goals are down and the number of unimaginative draws is up in 2015.

It’s been a little hard on the eyes, in all honesty. Too many matches have been naps waiting to happen.

And the worse thing about it: this was avoidable. In fact, the troubled trend was of Major League Soccer’s own doing.

So we’ll see if this past weekend is the beginning of a reversal or just a blip on a bleak radar? Best guess: We’re in for more of this mess, although we should certainly never lose hope.

Before we dive into the “whys” and “wherefores,” here are the raw numbers:

Goals are down to 2.07 per game this year, a significant reduction from last year’s 2.86 average. Last year’s number actually skewed a bit high, representing a nine-year high, in fact. Generally speaking, the goals-per-game average has hovered reliably just north of 2.5 over the last 10 years.

(By the way, last week’s average scoring, while up, was still below the 2014 rate; Week 4 saw 22 goals over eight matches, or 2.75 a game.)

The number of draws is ahead of last year’s rate; currently 29.5 percent of matches have finished in draws. That’s up a tick from 27.5 last year. Week 5 (no ties!) helped bring that number back down to something more respectable; if we were having this conversation a week ago, that number would have been a blacker mark still.

It’s possible the first few weeks represent a statistical anomaly. Perhaps more teams will rediscover their attacking will and send the scoring average back up to something less grisly. Maybe the L.A. Galaxy, off to another sluggish start – don’t panic, Galaxy fans, we’ve seen these before – will wake up and put a 5-goal spanking on some hapless victim. Or perhaps a few more 3-2 shootouts are out there, like the wildly entertaining back-and-forth tussle we saw Sunday night at Sporting Park; SKC found two stoppage time goals to squeeze past Philadelphia by that score.

In all honesty, MLS fans need them, because the 2015 season has been desperately shy on them so far.

Major League Soccer leaders added two more teams to the playoffs this year (going from 10 to 12). It was a bad idea for a bunch of reasons. Mostly, it further diminishes the importance of the regular season, as 60 percent of MLS teams now qualify for the post-season. That’s up from last year’s 52.6 percent.

But the choice of MLS leaders seems to be having another painful consequence. And from the bad fruit comes a bitter pill, one that’s being fed to paying supporters now.

Major League Soccer teams have lost some incentive to win. The safe way through the season is to, well, play it safe. For managers who want to keep their jobs (i.e., all of them) draws are OK.

As ESPN analyst Taylor Twellman pointed out, a team that ties all 34 of its games could conceivably make the playoffs! That may be a stretch – in a 12-team format last year, teams would have needed 42 points minimum to qualify – but his point is well made.

If MLS wants to have playoffs, great! This structure is part of the American sports culture, and the single-table advocates really need to just get over it. There is nothing wrong with playoffs – but there certainly is something wrong with an overly forgiving playoff format, one where the post-season is potentially reachable by drawing all of your matches.

What supporters are left with: too many matches without enough of an edge. Teams want to win, of course – but they aren’t necessarily desperate to win. That’s an important difference.

When tactical and personnel choices need to be made, the cautious route is too easy for managers to take. That becomes infectious. So when players are making real-time choices on the field, they take the cue and play it safe. (“I could make the run forward. But we might lose the ball, so I had better stay put.”)

So we get too many matches like the Week 4 low-speed chase outside Dallas, the first match in 20 MLS years to finish without a shot on target. Think about that for a second. The Sounders, depleted by injury and international call-ups, arrived in Texas clearly content to play for a draw. When Dallas had a player ejected early, it was the team from Texas that sat back, more or less satisfied with the prospects of splitting the points.

Just south of there at the very same time, Houston and Colorado were playing to a 0-0 draw. Of course, if you know the sad story of Colorado’s season so far, 90 minutes of turgid soccer is hardly surprising. The Rapids have yet to find goal, and three of four matches have been uninviting, 0-0 evenings.

Overall, no team in Week 3 or 4 scored more than two goals. Yuk.

The actually quality isn’t too bad. It’s that appetite to push forward, that hell bent determination to go generate a goal that seems to have gone missing.

The all-time low in league goals per game was 2.46 back in 2010. Let’s hope teams find their attacking will as this season moves forward. Because otherwise, the league’s milepost 20th season will be notorious as the year when league leaders unwittingly legislated offense out of the parks.

Editor’s note: Steve Davis writes a weekly column for World Soccer Talk. He shares his thoughts and opinions on US and MLS soccer topics every Wednesday, as well as news reports throughout the week. You can follow Steve on Twitter at @stevedavis90. Plus, read Steve’s other columns on World Soccer Talk