That's A Wrap!

The Rapids pulled off a smash and grab in Austin, bringing a point home with them to end the season.  While Colorado got some (very?) favorable officiating, the over-reaction from the Austin faithful to the result in what was, in the end, a meaningless game was the most entertaining part of it.  While the two waved off offside goals, one clear and one more questionable, are things we see go either way in games the foul that wasn't called on Abubakar late in the game was a huge miss that immediately came back to bite the ref as Lalas had the assist on the tying goal.  That said though, the 1-1 draw vs. a 1-0 win for Austin changed nothing in the league, so the Austin FC announcers going off as the game ended about how the official should never ref again went from professional to homer fan commentary in about 5 seconds.

The most interesting thing from the Rapids POV in this match was that tying goal, by none other than Diego Rubio.  With it he tied Conor Casey's single season record of 16 goals.  Combined with setting a new team record of 23 goals + assists, Rubio had arguably the best offensive season in team history.  He was directly involved in 50% of the goals the team scored (which isn't a team record, Spencer was involved in 58% in 2001, which I'm guessing is the record).  We'll get to the official View From the Couch MVP award in the next week or two, but it will be no surprise who gets it.

With that, this season is over.  Colorado had its 3rd worst year-over-regression, dropping back over 0.5 PPG from their 2021 pace.  Some of that was likely inevitable, given the record setting year we had, but this was a much bigger step back than anyone expected.  We'll get into that, roster analysis, and the rest over the next couple of weeks while MLS works through the playoffs.  Remember that we have an expansion draft for St. Louis coming up after MLS Cup.  Oh, and of course the World Cup.