The Col­orado Rapids put an end to their play­off drought with a 1–0 win over the Port­land Tim­bers on the road Wednes­day night. An 83rd-minute goal from Kel­lyn Acos­ta sealed the Bur­gundy Boys’ first MLS post­sea­son appear­ance since 2016.

In a hard-fought game that saw the Tim­bers dic­tate style, the Rapids had the legs for a late rush up the field to secure the vic­to­ry. Sev­er­al sound defen­sive plays and a few attacks that went by the way­side could’ve changed the score­line, but over­all it was a sol­id performance.

Here are three points to con­sid­er from the match:

Cascadia crusade

For the sec­ond time in four days, the Rapids beat the best team in the West­ern Conference.

A win over Seat­tle on Sun­day dropped the Sounders from the top of the table, and Wednes­day night’s vic­to­ry in Port­land did the same to the Timbers.

The two Cas­ca­dia clubs have rep­re­sent­ed some of the best in MLS since join­ing the league. The Rapids’ lone win in Port­land came in the Tim­bers’ expan­sion sea­son. Out­side of that, they’d only gained one point against the Tim­bers in pre­vi­ous meet­ings at Prov­i­dence Park — a draw last season.

Mak­ing the play­offs is a major achieve­ment for the Rapids, but to clinch with back-to-back wins against the Sounders and Tim­bers also adds an air of legit­i­ma­cy. Some might’ve tried to dimin­ish the club’s accom­plish­ment after MLS decid­ed to order the stand­ings based on points per game — a rul­ing that ben­e­fit­ed the Rapids after they missed a month due to a team-wide COVID-19 out­break. The past two results indi­cate the club is wor­thy of post­sea­son inclusion.

The Rapids looked lack­lus­ter in two loss­es after return­ing from the month-long hia­tus. But they put any ques­tions about regain­ing form to bed by knock­ing off two straight pos­si­ble play­off oppo­nents. By doing so, Col­orado would have been in posi­tion to clinch a post­sea­son spot even under nor­mal cir­cum­stances, but MLS’s deci­sion now gives the Rapids a shot at home-field advan­tage for the first round.

“Just incred­i­ble resilience, even as we start­ed to get pinned back you saw our guys con­tin­ue to fight,” Robin Fras­er said. “The goal was not a well-con­struct­ed goal, it was an incred­i­ble effort by a num­ber of play­ers to cre­ate it and then the com­po­sure back on defense, it was fan­tas­tic. I’m just real­ly proud of the team and they’ve dealt with a lot and to earn this play­off spot, is real­ly reward­ing for them.”

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The goal that will be remem­bered for some time deserves a clos­er look. The ball was won upfield by Sam Vines, then con­trolled by Diego Rubio. The strik­er pushed it on over to Younes Nam­li who gave it back to Rubio. The Chilean then tapped the ball over to Acos­ta for the score.

Vines is a home­grown play­er signed and devel­oped under exec­u­tive Padraig Smith. Rubio was trad­ed for by Smith. Nam­li was the first Des­ig­nat­ed Play­er Smith signed. And Acos­ta was strug­gling in Dal­las when Smith real­ized he could snatch a U.S. Men’s Nation­al Team midfielder.

Then there’s Fras­er, the coach Smith hired toward the end of 2019. After near­ly push­ing the club into the play­offs in his abbre­vi­at­ed close to last sea­son, he fin­ished the job in his first full cam­paign with the Rapids this year.

“I’m real­ly excit­ed for the club and real­ly excit­ed for the play­ers. I’m excit­ed as well,” Fras­er said. “I just think about the image of the Rapids for a while. As soon as I got here last year, I imme­di­ate­ly had an affin­i­ty for the team and the play­ers. I have felt — and we as a club have felt — that this is a group that is good and can be a real­ly good team. We feel like we’re mak­ing strides. We’re not where we want to be yet, but we’re cer­tain­ly mak­ing strides. I think get­ting to the play­offs is a bit of validation.”

The Rapids’ goal, as stat­ed by lead­er­ship, is to be a peren­ni­al play­off team. That’s not pos­si­ble with­out first get­ting bid No. 1.

“I prob­a­bly would go back to the pre­sea­son and what we did at New­port Beach and see the play­ers that we acquired that came in. They fit into the team like a glove,” Acos­ta said. “I think from pre­sea­son and those two games, you could tell that we real­ly have some­thing spe­cial going on. I think even with the stop and go’s, we’ve shown across the league that we can do it. We’ve won against the two best teams the last cou­ple of games and we’re not done yet.”

Back four, no scores

The Rapids record­ed their fourth shutout in their last eight match­es. Team defend­ing has been the foun­da­tion for Fras­er since arriv­ing in Col­orado. His club seems to have found a for­mu­la for suc­cess out of the back.

“I think we have a good oppor­tu­ni­ty win­ning games if we can get a shutout,” Acos­ta said. “All those guys in the back have put in shifts over the last few games and a lot of cred­it goes to them. Hav­ing that shut­down defense is key for our con­fi­dence and mov­ing for­ward and I think that’s the stan­dard for each and every game.”