What’s that I smell? Something in the air, drifting lazily to the ground, like crimson leaves plucked from a tree, or sailors’ corpses sinking to the bottom of the ocean. It smells like consternation. Like fear. Like blood in the water. It smells like panic.



The MLS Cup playoffs are upon us, and the Panic Rankings are finally coming to America. And considering chaos is just one of the core operating principles of MLS, the field is ripe for the harvest. Where else are you going to find a bottom-five team beating the team in first 4-1, just out of spite, on the last day of the season? Japan, probably, but also in MLS, where the rules are made up and the points don’t matter. So strap yourselves in, because we’ve got 12 teams still alive and a small hit-team of assassin writers (it’s just me) ready to lay your favorite team bare and perform open heart surgery with the Scalpel of Truth (full disclosure: I don’t actually have a...