What is a reducible flow graph?
This blog post summarises the situation well my opinion, but let me go through some of your concerns:

Reducible is NOT equivalent to acyclic: consider a path $x\rightarrow y\rightarrow z\rightarrow w$ with a loop from $z$ to $y$. Then there is an SCC $\{y,z\}$ so it is not acyclic. But it is reducible because the SCC $\{y,z\}$ has a single entry point y. Notice how this corresponds to a program with a while/for loop. On the other hand, if you consider a path $x\rightarrow y\rightarrow z\rightarrow w$ with again a loop $z\rightarrow y$ but also a forward jump $x\rightarrow z$. Not this is not reducible anymore because the SCC $\{y,z\}$ has two entry points: $y$ can be entered from $x$, but $z$ can also be entered from $x$. This intuitively corresponds to a program like that:

x: if &lt;some condition&gt; goto z
y: do { &lt;instruction&gt;
z: }while(&lt;cond condition}
w: end


Notice how there is no way to jump to $z$ without a goto, this is the point of reducibility and it corresponds to well-structured code without goto.

Concerning the back edges, if you take the counter-example for above, notice that there are two different ways to explore this tree in a DFS:


from $x$, explore $z$ then $y$ and $w$: in this case the edge $z\rightarrow y$ is part of the spanning tree built by the DFS. But $z$ does not dominate $y$ because the path $x\rightarrow y$ does not go through $z$.
from $x$, explore $y$ then $z$ then $w$: in this case the edge $y\rightarrow z$ is part of the spanning tree built by the DFS. But $y$ does not dominate $z$ because the path $x\rightarrow z$ does not go through $y$.


Maybe the source of your confusion is that domination is related to the initial vertex $x$, and not to the DFS. Recall that a vertex $y$ dominates a vertex $z$ if every path from the initial vertex to $z$ goes through $y$.