SEATTLE — Sounders star forward Clint Dempsey will indeed be in the starting lineup today in Houston when they open defense of their Major League Soccer championship.

So will forward Jordan Morris, midfielder Osvaldo Alonso and goalkeeper Stefan Frei, though how many minutes each plays, or subsequent March starts they’ll make, remains to be determined. Their status, with each working back from varying degrees of health issues, are part of a Herculean challenge the team inherited almost the moment it hoisted the Philip F. Anschutz Trophy last December to celebrate Seattle’s inaugural MLS Cup victory over Toronto FC.

Namely, the ensuing offseason was too darned short.

And that’s already created a multitude of health concerns alongside Dempsey, 33, who returns after being sidelined with an irregular heartbeat last August. The Sounders believe they’re a better team by taking a championship lineup and adding Dempsey to it, but that’s only going to matter if they prevent him and the rest of the squad from hitting a wall physically come summer.

“We’ve got to hang in there for the first month and a half, two months of the season,” Sounders general manager Garth Lagerwey said. “And if we take some knocks, hopefully it’s justified and we can build toward the rest of the season.”

Those “knocks” could come early, as the banged-up Sounders open in Houston — where they’ve never had success — then head to Montreal in front of what should be a massive crowd at Olympic Stadium. After that, their home opener March 19 is against the New York Red Bulls, last year’s Eastern Conference regular-season champions.

“It’s as tough a three games to open a season as you’re going to get,” Lagerwey said.

And the Sounders won’t be trying to win them at any cost. No painkiller injections like Alonso received last December just to take the field on a bad knee.

No, the Sounders realize the “whatever it takes” mentality that secured their title last November and December could be a 2017 death knell if deployed in March and April. They know the MLS Cup finalists from 2015, Portland and Columbus, missed the playoffs altogether last season.

So, they’ll give needed rest to players that did not have enough between the Dec. 10 title win and the Jan. 24 opening of camp.

Even if the win-loss record takes an early hit.

That’s why they’ve already shut down defender Brad Evans for five to seven weeks, even though he could have tried playing early on a strained calf muscle. They’ll allow midfielder Alonso to start on Saturday, but will be mindful he played only 60 minutes in his longest exhibition game and won’t hesitate to pull him.

“In the beginning I was a little unfit because it had been two months since I’ve been able to get in a game,” Alonso said. “But little by little, I’ve been getting better.”

Alonso says he’s “100 percent” ready, though team officials aren’t certain the number is that high yet and will keep close watch.

Same with Dempsey, who hasn’t played 90 minutes in a game since August. And Morris, who didn’t play the team’s final two exhibition games as he gets time to heal a twisted ankle.

Goalkeeper Frei also played just one exhibition game as he also recovers from an ankle injury. Frei isn’t reading much into the fact the team went winless in preseason and struggled offensively.

“We have so many new players who need to jell, who need to play 90 minutes, who need to get fit,” Frei said. “We’re working on touches, working on shape and all of the things that are way more important than whether you’re going to get a result or not.”

Lagerwey says the Sounders must be realistic about what they’ve been through. Players like MLS rookie of the year Morris, Evans, Frei and Chad Marshall had barely any time off before reporting to the U.S. men’s national team for January training, an overabundance of work that likely contributed to three of the four going down.

“Those guys were training two weeks, a little under three weeks, to prepare for a national-team camp,” Lagerwey said. “And again, that’s simply not tenable for a 10-month season.”

Lagerwey spent what little offseason time he had parting ways with 13 players — including Nelson Valdez, Andreas Ivanschitz, Tyrone Mears and Erik Friberg — in order to continue a gradual youth transition. Saturday’s lineup will include four starters age 27 or younger, compared to just two in last year’s opener.

Last year’s opening lineup also had five starters ages 31 and older, compared to four this time out.

The gradual youth shift still keeps a championship core intact. But it addresses that last year’s team felt duct-taped together by the end and failed to register a single shot in the MLS Cup final. No one doubts their championship grit, as witnessed by Alonso’s painkiller regimen to stay on the field, but the Sounders also want fresher legs this fall.

Which looms as the toughest task of Brian Schmetzer’s first full season as head coach. He’d inherited an underperforming, last-place team from outgoing Sigi Schmid last summer and his players knew they could no longer afford to lose games.

But now, Schmetzer must pick and choose when to pull the throttle on a team that — on paper at least — appears far more explosive than the defensive-oriented champion of last year. He realizes the team is unlikely to repeat last season’s turnaround if it digs into another hole by midseason, but also knows “Portland and Columbus crapped out” defending their recent conference titles and that he can’t exhaust his squad by July.

That will require, by Schmetzer’s own admission, some “smarter” coaching by him in tactics and psychology. It might mean playing more of a possession-type game on the road, avoiding the hype of other team’s home openers and trying to blow them off the field.

In short, the Sounders still need to win their share of early games. But they can’t treat every match like the MLS Cup final even if their opponents — psyched-up at facing the defending champs — inevitably do.

“We may come out of the gate a little slow physically,” Schmetzer says. “But the mental side of the thing is where I think hopefully I’ve done a good job of the messaging of really what it’s going to take to repeat as champions. How do we push buttons? Poke a little bit here, pat them on the shoulder there?”

There will be occasions, he adds, where the Sounders will need to remind people that “We’re the (expletive) MLS champs” and that the title means something.

And Schmetzer should have the lineup to “go for the throat” and blow teams out early if he succeeds at easing his recovering players back in and achieving long-term health come June.

The attacking trio of Dempsey, Morris and MLS Newcomer of the Year Nicolas Lodeiro scored six goals — five by Dempsey — in the four games they teamed together last summer. There’s also a possibility of adding Japanese star forward Keisuke Honda to that mix as a Designated Player once his AC Milan team finalizes a pending sale.

Throw in proven goal-scorer Will Bruin, acquired from Houston for allocation money as an in-game striker replacement, and this isn’t the same squad that — by design — retreated into a defensive shell in the playoffs. Add the explosive legs of Joevin Jones — not to mention Shoreline newcomer Henry Wingo off the bench — and this team could easily top the one that carried home the hardware last year.

But you don’t win a marathon by sprinting out of the blocks. Right now, the Sounders simply need to stay in the race to make their finishing kick worth something.