2023 Power Rankings

I'm pretty optimistic about the 2023 season. Am I naive? All the "experts" are placing the Rev's very low. Sam Jones, predicts 19th. Really?

 

I think the Revs are being very disrespected - it's almost like 2021 never happened. But, that's fine - it's up to the team to change people's minds.

 

Sounds reasonable - no reason to overreact to what was always going to be a really tough road game.

 

We'll see where the MLS power rankings put us this week, but it'll likely be a stark contrast to ESPN's rankings, which have us at 18, up from 21 before beating Nashville. I can understand being more pessimistic about the Revs than MLS's rankings have been, but ESPN seems excessive.

(NB: Nashville is at 7, holding steady from last week despite losing to the supposedly 21st-ranked team. Seems dubious.)

 

Yes, absolutely - we're 3rd in points in the league, with a reasonable degree-of-difficulty so far. They're overreacting to the run-up in the final minutes at LA.

 

I'd put us upper half, but not upper third - somewhere in the 10-14 range. At this stage, I would not say there are 17 teams better than us, especially not with how we beat Nashville while Gil-less. It's obviously early, but Blessing and Romney have been huge additions, and Borrero is looking like Tajon 2.0. I think our prospects are good.

(And while it's true that two of the teams we played are in the bottom 10 in PPG, they're in the bottom 10 in PPG in part because we beat them. I mean, Houston beat Austin, which is nothing to sneeze at, and Charlotte beat Orlando while losing to Atlanta and St. Louis, two of the toughest teams in the league. So it's not like they're being beaten up by the Little Sisters of the Poor.)

 

Undoubtedly some people look at it this way. For me, it's a loss - doesn't matter if we lost 1-0 or 4-0.

We gifted them a goal - otherwise it's a tie game closing in on the 67th minute or somewhere around there.

Regardless, power rankings are just opinions.

 

The only power rankings I care about are where we are at the END of the season.

 

I guess the writers should hop in their time machine and start reporting on that

 

Revs are getting points, but not convincing people. In 2021, on our way to the shield, we were similar - very good at getting a result, even without always looking good doing it.

 

And I'm OK with that. Let the St. Louies and Seattles and Atlantas of the world be this year's Austin, whu-evva. If we can keep this up, maybe by September the "pundits" may wake up and say, y'know, New England aren't that bad, even though they missed the playoffs last year...

 

Another power ranking moved us up one spot, basically saying it was our turn to take points from Montreal. Fair enough. The real tests are coming with eastern conference leader showdowns @Columbus and home vs. Cincinnati among the next 3 MLS schedule games.

 

Yeah, now that we're far enough into the season to get an idea of relative strengths, the 2 Ohio games will show us a lot of where this team is so far. But good teams are the ones that win the games they should win, like Montreal, Houston or some of the other weaker teams we come up against. Mediocre teams are the ones that will have bad days or fall victim to "trap" games, but at least so far, that hasn't been us.

Compare it with last year where there were countless games we should have won/taken points but didn't, like RSL in the snow, up 2-0 at 75 minutes and losing 3-2.

 

True. Getting a result isn't critical, but showing that we belong and are competitive are pretty important to building confidence and proving that the good start isn't an illusion.