It's preseason, so I'm not going to ask you to read a whole lot into these rankings. Not to denigrate our own rankings, but they are what they are: A collective opinion of 17 soccer editors based on little more than what we've read.

I still think they are worthwhile, though, as they give us a sense of how the soccer world sees how our teams are shaping up. Those early returns suggest the Sounders are definitely in the conversation for teams expected to contend for the Supporters' Shield, but are in no way dominating that conversation. Less than half of our editors placed the Sounders in Tier 1, but no one put them lower than Tier 2.

The Portland Timbers, for what it's worth, were placed in Tier 2 by just two editors (of which I was, admittedly, one) and the Vancouver Whitecaps were unanimously placed in the bottom tier. I don't know that either of those developments are particularly surprising. One other thing worth noting, just three of the nine teams that got enough votes to be placed in the top two tiers are from the Eastern Conference, and one of those teams is the the Houston Dynamo.

After the jump, I've attached Dave and I's rankings. You'll find the complete SB Nation rankings in the sidebar.

Jeremiah's Rankings

Dave's Rankings