Colorado shoots for Rapid rebound

FOXBORO, Mass. -- Joe Cannon's face told the story. One of absolute frustration, a bit of embarrassment, and a bit of shock.

After the New England Revolution scored its fifth goal of the night, all the Colorado Rapids keeper could muster was that type of blank stare that spoke volumes.

He was beyond the point of yelling at his back four to keep their marks or to push forward in hopes of getting back into the match.

Instead it was more of a case of getting to the 90th minute to limp in the locker room and lick your wounds from the savage beating the Revs laid on them in front of their home crowd on Saturday night.

Of course, Taylor Twellman's 71st minute strike didn't help matters. It only reinforced what a nightmare performance the Rapids were going through.

At 6-1, it was akin to a 42-7 drubbing in the NFL. All it needed was Shannon Sharpe picking up the white courtesy phone to beg for the National Guard to come in and bail out Tim Hankinson's side.

It was simply that type of night. And one that came, surprisingly, after the Rapids had reeled off a five-game unbeaten streak to rise to the top of the Western Conference standings.

"This is a kick in the ass," deadpanned Hankinson, who spoke stoically in the away locker room after the match. "We have to recognize that we're not in the playoffs yet. If this is all we bring as a first-place team, then clearly we don't deserve to be in first place."

The laundry list on what went wrong was long.

Hankinson thought his squad defended poorly, got caught ball-watching -- something very evident when Twellman scored his first goal of the night in the 28th minute after running past three Colorado defenders as though they were standing in quicksand -- and didn't play with the same sort of hunger the home side displayed.

Centerback Nat Borchers agreed.

"We did everything wrong - giving balls away, not making tackles, and every shot they took went in," said the second-year player out of the University of Denver. "It was their night. This is embarrassing."

It made for a short reign as the frontrunner in the West. Combined with Kansas City's 1-0 victory over San Jose, the Rapids fell back into second place, just one point ahead of Los Angeles (38 points), which has played one less game than Colorado.

"This is a wake-up call," said Borchers. "Those guys were fighting for their (playoff) lives, and we think we're a first-place team. And we're not. We're not right now."

Cannon said he wouldn't allow anyone to say they caught them off guard or the like. Knowing the Revs had the least points (24) in all of MLS and desperately needed a victory just to get within firing range of Chicago for the fourth and final playoff spot in the East, it's not as though the Rapids didn't expect to see some fire in their opponents' eyes on Saturday.

"The sad part is that I think everyone in this locker room knew that was going to happen," said Cannon, whose goals-against-average was upped to 1.07 to put him just behind Kansas City's Tony Meola for tops in MLS. "That they're playing for their lives. We have to deal with that (expletive) better because every team we play now will be playing for their playoff lives."

It might be time for another look in the mirror for the Rapids. It worked the first time around, which started the team's successful run of five games in the first place.

The date was Aug. 11 and it came after a 3-1 loss on the road to D.C. United. On that night, it looked as though D.C. had a three-man advantage at all times. D.C. danced with the ball, knocked it around effortlessly and downright made Colorado look like a second-rate side.

It could have been worse, too, had Cannon not made several impressive saves. The laughs on the faces of the United players after Jaime Moreno nutmegged Joey DiGiamarino and virtually created an own-goal with a cheeky pass off of defender Ritchie Kotschau for his side's third goal certainly didn't help matters.

It rained the next day and ruined Colorado's plans to get in a session in Washington D.C., before flying to Chicago for its Saturday night match. Instead, the team met up in a conference room of its hotel and the players assessed where they were and where they wanted to be. Several players spoke and feelings were laid out on the table.

Their renewed commitment resulted in two straight victories followed by a tie on the road at San Jose. In the next match against Dallas at home on Sept. 4, the Rapids saw themselves down 1-0 at halftime. It was then that the side's two definitive leaders -- Cannon and John Spencer -- had a slight altercation in the locker room.

That incident ignited a fire within the team that resulted in several players speaking up, saying they needed to play for each other and forget the past problems that have existed within the squad for the past few years.

It resulted in Colorado coming out more offensive in the second half and scored two goals to pull out what, to a man, the players called a defining victory.

If that's the case, was the 6-1 drubbing a defining loss? And, where does Colorado go from here?

"A night like tonight can certainly make you learn a hard lesson so that the next time you're more ready for it," said Hankinson. "I think sometimes a night like tonight reminds you how close you can still be to the bottom in your performance. If you don't bring a deep level of concentration and a roll-up-your-sleeve, be-ready-to-work mentality then a team can get on you like tonight. Hopefully, we can take this as a hard lesson late in the season. Better a lesson learned with three games left and then the first round of the playoffs."

"It's not going to get any worse next week," said Cannon. "In a sense we hit rock bottom. We've been lucky this year, but we're going to come back from this. We have a good team. You know what? I hope the rest of the league takes us lightly because of this result because I think they'll be in for a surprise."

Colorado won't have it easy down the stretch, though.

For starters, a huge match against Kansas City at Arrowhead is on tap this coming weekend. A Rapids win will mean another week in first place, however, a loss could result in a drop into third place, and possibly one loss away from the cellar depending how Dallas does against the MetroStars.

It's something that's not lost on Cannon, who won an MLS Cup with San Jose in 2001.

"The West is still pretty tight," he said. "If we play like this every weekend, we'll be watching the playoffs this year."

At the same time, Cannon was hardly moping around in the locker room after the New England match. Despite the poor performance and getting run off the field in a way that, as Cannon said, his San Jose team from three years ago never had happen to them, he remained confident in his side's ability to not only get into the playoffs, but be a major factor.

"I'll tell you this," said Cannon, loud enough so a few teammates could also hear. "This team is going to come back from this. And we're going to show the league. We're going to do well this year. We're going to go after it.

"This game is in the past, and we're going to leave it here."

Marc Connolly covers American soccer for ESPN Soccernet.com. He can be reached at: marc@oakwoodsoccer.com