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| It's nine ten somewhere, mother...shit. Never mind. |
MLS’s highest franchise, the Colorado Rapids, have just two trophies (that aren’t the Rocky Mountain Cup) in their trophy case after 29 seasons in the leg. So, one may ask, what the flaming hell are they doing as the seventh team in this series? To explain the title, Colorado is like a team that gives the right time twice a day, and just twice. Consider the following: they won MLS Cup once (2010) and have felt the shameful sting of the Wooden Spoon exactly one time, way back the league’s first season (1996); the only other MLS Cup they competed in arguably doesn’t count, coming as it did in the second season (1997), even if they won their one and only U.S. Open Cup that same season. What sets them apart, even if by a thin margin, comes with the fact that they have this thing where they come out of backside of absolutely nowhere and do something wild and weird like reach the semifinals in the playoffs (2016 and 2021), or maybe they jump out of the bushes and swipe the Western Conference title (okay…yes, that’s 2021 again). To be clear, yes, I understand that fans of this team sees opportunities to brag less often than Americans elect their next president (hold that thought; might not hold for long), but every one of those rare, great seasons gives the Rapids a certain kind of superpower: they scramble expectations for all the teams around them, if mostly during the regular season, and mainly in the Western Conference. Part of that follows from the challenges of drawing top talent to a (no offense) backwater market and with an historically tight-fisted front office writing the invites - e.g., paying $3 million for Djordje Mihailovic going into 2023 was their record signing until they bumped it to (maybe) $3.5 million for Rafael Navarro in the middle of 2024 (great deal so far). Their most famous players used to be goalkeepers – e.g., Tim Howard, Zac Steffen(?) - defenders – e.g., Marcelo Balboa, Drew Moor, Jeff Larentowicz(?) – or defensive midfielders – e.g., Pablo Mastroeni. A couple dozen players could squeeze onto the very short list above if one wanted to go deeper (see Colorado’s (gently-outdated) all-time roster and build your own!), but the Rapids have often been a spine of a team waiting for attacking legs and arms to make them complete and dangerous enough to make one of those semifinals runs. As implied above, they do pull it off now and then, with the most famous example being the attacking line of Omar Cummings and Conor Casey, who led them to MLS Cup 2010. The relative absence of famous names on the Rapids’ other two, post-2010 “glory teams” – i.e., the one that mounted the 2016 semifinal run (Shkelzen Gashi? Dillon Powers? Axel Sjoberg?) or 2021’s Western Conference-winning roster (Jack Price? Danny Wilson? The season that sold everyone on Lalas Abubakar before…yeah) – goes back to the point I’m making about the Rapids franchise overall: there is no way to see their next good season coming, but that season will abruptly become one more obstacle standing between your local team and a shot at glory.
And if that doesn’t completely explain why I placed them seventh in their series, here’s the rest: they have consistently been the same team throughout their history in MLS and, unlike the rest of the originals coming up, they have enjoyed some form of success over the past 10 seasons.
Total Joy Points: 8
How They Earned Them (& How This Is Calculated, for Reference)
MLS Cup: 2010
MLS Cup Runner-Up: 1997
MLS Playoffs Semifinals: 2002, 2005, 2006, 2016, 2021
MLS Playoffs/Quarterfinals: 1998, 1999, 2000, 2003, 2004, 2011
Wooden Spoon: 1996
U.S. Open Cup: 1997
U.S. Open Cup Runner-Up: 1999
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| I quietly admire the guys who keep going. |
Hope you’re sitting down for this, but the Rapids have a history of fielding subpar-to-crappy attacks. They have either matched the average for goals scored (8 times) or fell below it (4 times) – sometimes well below (8 times) – in 20 of 29 regular seasons (i.e., what in the name of Kevin Cabral is going on here?). On the rare occasions they have topped the goals-for average, they haven’t gone over by much. A great defense could have rescued more Colorado seasons – as it did in 2016, when a stellar defense threw a crappy attack on its back and carried it to second place (Howard probably deserves his own sub-entry) – but Colorado fields average (2 times) or worse (14 times) overall defenses more often than not. In fewer words, the Rapids have a history of fielding crappy teams. And yet there’s that knack for finding a pony in a pile of shit every five to six seasons...
How 2024 Measured Up
It went against the pattern above in a way Colorado hasn’t seen since 1998. Led by Navarro (a rare gem at forward), Mihailovic, and a surprise season by long-time square peg Cole Bassett, the attack hummed to where the Rapids scored the eighth-most goals in the league (don’t knock it; this is Colorado). The defense wasn’t so much shitty as they’d drop points in bunches – the Rapids allowed three goals or more eleven times during the regular season (see here), and that’s on top of dropping nine more in two savage games against the LA Galaxy in the post-season (then again, that's after losing four straight down the stretch) – so it’s clear that things simply didn’t work on that side of their field. Just to note it, I saw (the now-departed) Moise Bombito getting hype now and again and, without having seen him play, I’ll just note that the Rapids had to play through almost as many of those three-plus goals-allowed games in the first half of the season (5), than they did in the second half (6). As an absolute fanatic on the subject, I’ll direct some questions about such things happen to a midfield defensive two of Oliver Larraz and Connor Ronan (see here), or from the 3-5 loss at Real Salt Lake, Larraz and Cole Bassett. In fewer words, I don’t know whether the Rapids have a dedicated or ready-made No. 6 on the entire (possibly outdated) roster. Bottom line, Colorado presents like a team constructed to have the kind of goal-crazy season they did. I don’t know how their fans felt about that, but I kind of liked it for them. Very much related, had you bet me that Colorado would make the playoffs with Chris Armas as head coach at the start of 2024, you’d be driving my car right now, like today.
Questions for Their 2025 Season
To squeeze it into a single question, how much can Colorado do to improve on the defensive side of the ball without sacrificing too much of what made them a top-half-of-the-table attack? My answer is above (get thee a Mighty No. 6), but that last line of defense could probably use some love too. After dishing Abubakar to FC Dallas (hope it works for both of them!), they went as far as they’re likely to with the acquisition(s) of Ian Murphy and Chidozie Awaziem from FC Cincinnati, plus the actual drunken-sailor spree they pulled at the 2024/25 MLS SuperDraft (it's like they were recruiting for Commerce City's first frat house) . On the one hand, it’s tempting to call this a decent core – maybe one of the Rapids’ best in a while – just one that needs the right pieces to improve in 2025; on the other, there’s Colorado's terriblem historic habit of reverting to the mean.
That’s it for this one. It gets ugly for the MLS originals from here. Till then…
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