Without player rotation and substituions, the Colorado Rapids must watch fatigue

Since it's still a bit early in the season, it's unlikely to mean all that much for a while. The Crew match was simply an easy way to see fatigue in the players since it was at the end of a rough eight-day stretch. The MLS season is a slog, though. If this team is as good as they're playing right now, the last thing I want to see is a Rapids team that is playing a step slower in October than they were in May because the team's best players have all played nearly every minute available.

It sucks to break up things like the Cronin-Azira pairing, or the wonderfully stout defensive line of Williams-Burling-Sjoberg-Burch, but if this team is actually as improved both tactically and in morale as the Rapids are claiming through this run, three or four players getting chances every couple of matches shouldn't send them into a tailspin. (It's worth noting that other than the helter skelter Crew goal, Watts had quite a good match filling in for Burling in the only change yesterday, though it wasn't a good match to judge anyone since the team was so noticeably off their game.)

This is the first time in his Rapids coaching career that Mastroeni has found something that has worked, and worked well. The Rapids are undefeated in 7 and have several players playing as well as they ever have. If he continues to run this exact same starting XI into the ground every week, though, there's a chance that by the end of the season fatigue will have taken its course. The fitness of this team is excellent, I've no doubt of that. That said, Barcelona was the best team in Spain for the entire La Liga season but almost saw their efforts collapse near the end of the year because of a fatigued group of players that were playing nearly every match for the team all year long. And as good as the Rapids are, this team certainly isn't Barcelona.