The offshoot of being in ninth place in the Western Conference at the start of August is that every game suddenly becomes a must-win. The time for half measures was already over.
Even then, though, the Seattle Sounders could not have harbored much hope that they’d be fighting to claw within a single result of crossing the sixth-place red line Rubicon into postseason eligibility this soon. After all, the Sounders were nine points out of the playoffs with just 14 games left to go and a stacked conference looking down at them.
It Seattle did get back into the playoff discussion, logic dictated, it would probably not materialize until October.