Saying Goodbye Tomorrow

The final home game of the season is tomorrow and while our slim playoff hopes left last week, tomorrow is going to be a home departure for a couple of notable Rapids.  The big one will be Drew Moor, who announced his retirement today.  After an 18 year career its ending (at least at home) almost where it started, with the Rapids hosting his original team FC Dallas.  Drew is an absolute club legend and he retires with the 2nd most starts, appearances, and minutes in team history, trailing only Pablo Mastroeni in all three categories.  He's also one of only 6 field players in league history to reach 400 appearances, more than half of them with the Rapids.  A member of the 2010 MLS Cup winning squad, he's going to go into the Gallery of Honor in the future, and the Rapids press release about his retirement mentions "celebrating him early next year", so expect an induction ceremony at halftime of one of our first home games.

On top of all that, Drew has been a fan favorite since his arrival in 2009 and his return in 2020.  I expect one of the subs tomorrow has already been reserved to get him into the game (if they don't start him, because why not?), which will be his 210th regular season appearance in burgundy.  There's been a lot of talk about what he might do next, everything from coaching to media, but whatever it is I hope the Rapids find room for him to do it here.

Speaking of media, that's the other farewell tomorrow.  Centennial 38 will be giving our favorite commentary duo a sendoff at the tailgate tomorrow, with Fleming and Balboa calling their last game together next week with the Austin away game.  The Apple TV deal means there won't be any "home" and "away" commentary teams next season and it seems unlikely that the duo will be hired to work for the new MLS/Apple streaming setup.  After 10 years they are wrapping it up and since tomorrow's game is on Univision and not Altitude, Richard Fleming has the day off, while Marcelo Balboa is working the game in Spanish.  Despite that, they are going to make time in the hour before scheduled kickoff to stop by the C38 tailgate and get the sending off and love they richly deserve.  Please try to stop by and thank them for everything.

With all of that going on, and with Colorado being out of playoff contention, the actual game seems secondary.  The game is scheduled for kickoff at 1:30, but since its a Univision game there will be about 20 minutes of pregame and actual kickoff will be around 1:50.  It will also likely be wet.  Seems appropriate that a home season that started with disappointment in the snow will end with resignation in the rain.

Eliminated

With the Galaxy's win over the Earthquakes tonight the Rapids are officially eliminated from playoff contention.

All Over But The Shouting

Told you I'd be posting less, but I didn't expect to go completely quiet like that.  Family stuff, you know.  Anyway, after a week where we beat the teams we should beat but didn't beat the team we needed to be (and in fact, got curb stomped by them) our playoff chances are really all but mathematically done.  The only way to the postseason for Colorado is to beat Dallas at home and Austin on the road (ha!), have the Galaxy and FSL draw, have FSL not win its other game have the Galaxy lose both of its other games, have Vancouver not win one of their two games, and have Seattle not win two of there three games.  Easy, right?

What this run-in has shown us is that the Rapids aren't a playoff team, but they aren't the bottom of the league either.  They're good enough to pop up and cause issues for any team, but they're not good enough to sustain it, especially on the road.  Its a long cry from last year at this time, when we were about to go on and win the West.  A lot of people, and a lot of statistical analysis, suggested we overperformed last year.  A lot of that same analysis is suggesting we're underperforming this year.  So some have suggested the reality of this team is that we're probably a playoff team that got good breaks last year and bad ones this year.

I disagree though.  I think that undersells what we built in 2021, and what we let collapse in 2022.  Sam Vines, Cole Bassett, Auston Trusty, Kellyn Acosta, and Mark-Anthony Kaye are National Team quality players that have left this team for various reasons and not been replaced.  The quality of the 2022 Rapids is not the same as the quality of the 2021 team.  Sadly, what we built last year is now gone, and we are looking at a significant rebuild.  That's the real failure of this season.

On a different, sad, note, former Rapids head coach Tim Hankinson passed away from cancer last night.  He was 67 years old.  Hankinson had a long coaching career stretching 40 years, including both the Tampa Bay Mutiny and Rapids in MLS and Fort Lewis College in Durango, among 15 teams in 4 countries on 3 continents.  He was at the helm here in Colorado from 2001-2004, taking the Rapids to the playoffs in all but his first year.  He also recruited/drafted notable Rapids like Pablo Mastroeni, John Spencer, and Joe Cannon.  Rest in peace Tim.

Another Game, Another Unhelpful Result

A pretty meh game in DC where the team once again didn't look dangerous until the end.  At least the defense showed up, with some help by Yarbrough making his first ever PK save.  Still a 0-0 draw with an xG of 1.0 doesn't not make for a playoff team.  Over this 3 game East Coast trip the team was outscored 10-1, came back with 1 point, and had a combined xG of less than 3.0 over the 3 games.  The organization can say all they want about still having a shot at the playoffs, but the reality is this isn't a team playing like it.  This is a team that's realized its done for the season and is just going through the motions.

Right now the playoff like looks to be 48 points.  If the Rapids win out they would end up with 48 points.  No, that's not going to happen.

So, DC Tomorrow

The Rapids finish their East Coast swing with a game in the cation's capital tomorrow evening.  There's no salvaging this trip, being down 10-1 so far.  With the way tonight's games have gone the playoff line is at 48 points, so anything short of a win tomorrow means that Colorado would have to win out and get a lot of help to make it in, but based on the way we played in August, 1.14 PPG while being outscored 21-13 (oddly, that 1.14 is exactly our season average too) we're not going to win 5 straight anyway.  Kickoff tomorrow is at 5:30pm and we have 5 more blackouts before the Apple deal ends it.  Though the way we're playing I'm not sure the blackouts are a bad thing.

Injury Report: 

OUT: D Seb Anderson, D Jackson Travis, M Ollie Larraz, M Jack Price

Disciplinary Report:

ONE YELLOW FROM SUSPENSION; D Lalas Abubakar, M Bryan Acosta

At this point I hope Fraser puts out 11 players who actually care about not checking out for minutes at a time and that want to win the game.

Prediction: 1-1 draw, goal by Rubio.  Do you see this team winning?  Me neither, no matter how bad DC is.  They are bad enough that we should get a point, but until the Rapids actually appear to care about winning, I'm not going to predict they will.

On To 2023

I could go into detail about what went wrong this game, what our mathematical chances are in 2022, and what we need to look for on Sunday, but we've all seen it before.  This is the same Rapids that have been falling down since midseason, and there's no indication that's going to change.  I'm just going to put out these two stats.

In a make or break week for our playoff chances, we've been outscored 10-1 in two games

In a game last night that we absolutely had to win to have a playoff shot, our xG didn't go above 0.0 until the 85th minute, finishing at 0.4.

Quite simply this team doesn't have the talent or drive to compete any more this year.  Its questionable if it ever did.

I've got some travel and work commitments coming up, and this team isn't giving me any reason to go out of my way to keep to my normal game preview/review schedule.  That doesn't mean I'm going quiet for the rest of the year, just that you may see smaller posts and I may skip some.  Once we're officially eliminated and the year ends I'll be back with my normal wrap-ups and roster analysis as me move on to 2023.