Clever title goes here

It was a sort of odd week in MLS. I say that as a team that didn't play gained a whole lot of ground on the top spot in power rankings and actually sort of exploited what I'm just gonna call the cruise control loophole in my rating formula. Since the spreadsheet needs a value for every team every week, teams that don't play get sort of a pass. If they've been playing well, their rating goes up, poorly and it goes down as if their last resutls had carryed through the week. In DC's case, they've been playing very well lately, while the other top teams around them have been sputtering. This make it look like DC is pulling ahead of everyone. I sort of predicted this would happen so I'm not really surprised, but fixing it might be trickier than I think right now, and to maintain consistency I'm not gonna tweak it until the season is over.

The saving grace for those who don't like it is that this happens to every team equally and in a way gives extra reward to teams doing really well and extra punishment to those doing really bad. It's also very self correcting in that the teams impacted by this need to maintain their top form, and the second they stumble the fall will be a little harsher. So I'm not too terribly worried. In the end, people only really look at the ranking anyway.

So I think I gave away who the best team is. DC stays atop the rankings, followed by San Jose and Salt Lake city, who partially redeemed themselves. Again, I'll bet we see a massive swing in rankings from others who dropped RSL too much earlier on. Slow and steady wins the race here and I don't like the seismic shifts a lot of people who put out rankings seem to employ.

In other news, Dallas gets a draw which pulls them away from Toronto, who revert back to their old selves, and New York stumbles a bunch. Kansas City's draw doesn't help them and Chicago falls off the cusp while Seattle stops the bleeding and settles out still in the top 10.

Here's the full table.

Week 18
Team	Rank	Weekly Δ	SHF Rating	Weekly Δ
DC	1	NC	157,025	+5,764
San Jose	2	NC	148,438	-2,823
Salt Lake City	3	+1	125,828	+828
New York	4	NC	118,012	-7,862
Kansas City	5	NC	114,458	-3,963
Vancouver	6	+1	106,145	-364
Chicago	7	-1	104,972	-4,784
Columbus	8	NC	101,064	-1,209
Seattle	9	NC	96,939	+1,194
Houston	10	NC	94,527	-209
Colorado	11	NC	85,202	-3,498
LA	12	NC	84,071	+2,623
New England	13	+1	80,851	+3,265
Chivas	14	-1	78,189	-72
Philadelphia	15	+1	76,000	+3,711
Portland	16	-1	74,219	-1,731
Montreal	17	NC	70,370	-218
Dallas	18	NC	67,376	+2,158
Toronto	19	NC	57,057	-635

Hooray for DC. Honestly, my concern now shifts towards the Open Cup against a Philadelphia team that's finally starting to find some confidence. I really want this bad so I'm gonna be bititng my lip until Wednesday on anything else.