Postgame Pontifications: Trending in the right direction

SEATTLE — For all the improvement the Seattle Sounders have made since their disastrous nine-game start to the season, this has not been a team that has necessarily been fun to watch on a regular basis.

Yes, they’ve figured out how to get results. Yes, they’ve even improved an offense that seemed to be stuck in second gear. But even when they were playing well, it was rarely expansive and even more rarely exciting.

With their 2-0 win over Sporting KC on Sunday, it seemed like the Sounders may have turned a corner.

The scoreline wasn’t particularly impressive or anything all that different from what we’ve seen in recent months. This was the 10th time in 15 league games where they had scored at least two goals in a game. It was also the fifth time in that same stretch where they won by at least two goals.

What differentiated this game was how the Sounders played. It obviously helped that they got the opening goal in the 19th minute when Jackson Ragen pounced on a rebound off a well struck Jordan Morris header. But at no point did they seem to be satisfied with coasting to victory.

Only a few minutes after Ragen scored, it looked like they had added another when Morris got a deflection from a Cristian Roldan header. That it was wiped away when VAR — correctly — ruled it offside hardly seemed to matter. The Sounders kept attacking and added another goal, this time with Paul Rothrock finishing off a beautiful 26-pass sequence with a sliding finish.

Punctuating the goal was Rothrock’s celebration with Georgi Minoungou, who was making his first career start at Lumen Field. Rothrock and Minoungou both came to the Sounders through the Tacoma Defiance and had become good friends in that time. Rothrock said the dance was a way of celebrating their common journey while also paying tribute to Minoungou’s father, who recently passed away.

It was also symbolic of the improved vibes around the Sounders. That the Sounders failed to add a third goal in the game despite being awarded a penalty and having several other quality looks at goal weren’t so much cause for frustration as they were points of potential improvement.

“There’s still a lot to reflect on this game,” Rothrock said in the postgame locker room. “I want to hold myself to a higher standard. I still could have been better in certain moments. As a team, we could have been better. We’ve got to hold ourselves to a higher standard.

“But it’s great to come out of a game like this with a win and it sets us up for this homestand to finish out strong and make a really good run to end the season.”

While a game like this likely would have been frustrating earlier in the year, it still felt satisfying despite the missed chances to run up the score. The Sounders seemed to be playing with a freedom we’ve rarely seen, nutmegging opponents, setting each other up with back heels and pinging the ball all over the field.

This was a team that seemed to be playing with — dare I say it? — swagger.

It’s been well-earned.

It was about three months ago that the Sounders hit something like an emotional low point of their season, coincidentally also against Sporting KC. That was the game they lost 2-1 after blowing a second-half lead, falling to what at the time was one of the worst teams in the league. Although the Sounders had been playing better over the preceding couple of months, it seemed fair to ask if that was all an illusion.

Rather than sinking their season, though, it somehow kickstarted it.

The following game was a 2-0 win over Minnesota United in which Rothrock came off the bench to score his first MLS goal of the season and log 83 minutes, by far the most he’d played for the Sounders. Including that game, the Sounders have gone 9-2-1 in the 13 matches since the Sporting KC loss. No team in MLS has claimed more than their 28 points and only Inter Miami (2.7) have more points per game than Seattle’s 2.33. The Sounders have mostly done that with a defense that has allowed a league-low .92 goals per game in that time, but their offense has been sneaky good, too (1.92 goals per game).

Given that most of these results have come against teams below them in the standings, it’s probably a little premature to say the Sounders are genuine MLS Cup contenders. But what can’t be denied is that the Sounders are getting results and even putting on a show.

Of course, Rothrock and his teammates know that’s not quite enough: “We have to play better than tonight to beat the better teams in the West.”

What’s somewhat comforting is a statement like that now feels appropriately aspirational, not defeatist.