What Is This "Soccer Game" You Speak Of?

Hey, looks like the Rapids are actually going to get to play again this season!  There have been no new reports of positive COVID tests out of Commerce City and the team is set to fly to KC tomorrow morning for their game.  All players have returned from any COVID isolation and, barring any other injuries, will be available tomorrow.  Kickoff is at 6:30pm and one thing that wasn't fixed during the month down-time is the TV situation.  Unless you have DirecTV or are outside of Altitude's broadcast area you still won't have access to the game through normal means.

Normally I project a starting lineup and a score but I really have no idea what we're going to see tomorrow.  We're a month from game fitness with limited training in that time.  Fraser is going to have to pick whomever has 90 minutes in the, and has looked good in the few training sessions they've had.  Hopefully the team will be mentally strong enough to put in a good effort but its going to be hard to blame them if they look fatigued and rusty.

Currently Colorado has 5 games left on the schedule.  They have missed the last 7 games, but the most recent game they missed was a reschedule of the first game they missed, so they're only 6 games behind.  The fourth of the five remaining games is the rescheduled game from the second game they missed, so if they play all 5 of the remaining games they'll be 5 games behind.  It appears that MLS is likely to call that good enough and use average points per game (PPG) to determine the playoff spots.  Going off of past seasons and where the 8th placed team ended up you're looking at 1.3 PPG being the likely threshold for the playoffs this year if that's what the league does.  The Rapids need 5 points in these 5 games to be at 1.3 PPG for the season.