Before this road trip they had won all of once on the road. After the loss to SJ, it looked more realistic than not that their playoff hopes were cooked. They've done well to climb back up the table, but the suddenness with which they've done it also tells you how quickly they can fall back down. I'm not counting any chickens yet, but it's encouraging that they've won two in a row (i) at all, and (ii) on the road, albeit against pretty weak teams.A possibility? They're 5 points up on the outsider Austin FC, ahead of four other teams if you count the play-in round. It'd be a pretty big collapse to not even make the play-ins with the current standings.
What we can all agree on is that they're likelier than Inter Miami to make the playoffs even if Messi was playing like it was 2012 in Barcelona.
The point I regularly make here when the hyperbole about the team's badness hits a fever pitch also applies when things are going better: MLS has like four really good teams, 2-3 really bad ones, and then everyone else is within a couple points of each other, so everyone is pretty much average and it's hard to make meaningful generalizations.