Overwatch League broadcaster Robert "hexagrams" Kirkbride spoke with The Dallas Morning News about things Fuel and Overwatch this week ahead of the club's matches against Hangzhou (7:45 p.m. CDT Thursday) and Guangzhou (7:15 p.m. Sunday). Here are some of the highlights

Answers have been lightly edited for brevity and clarity:

Question: The Dallas Fuel are in the midst of a nine-match losing streak, they’ve done pretty poorly in the second half of the season. What are some of the key reasons why?

Answer: Dallas is in one of those weird spots. You want them to be consistent and roll out the same starting six, but at the same time, that hasn't worked either. So they keep rolling out these new rosters to try something -- I think that's also hurting them. They're a tough team to get a bead on because they did just go to five against the Gladiators, and the Gladiators are a legit team.

They went to five against NY Excel. ... Right now, I don’t think they know who their best starting starting six players are and so no one gets enough play time, no one feels comfortable and calm. They keep rolling out different iterations of the same roster and none of it is working.

You want them to try something different to maybe get wins, but at the same time you figure you put your best six players in there, if they even know who their best six players are.

Question: Who do you think needs to be part of their best six players; who should be part of that lineup?

Answer: I think uNKOE is really, really good. I've always rated him very highly as a player. I think the issue is he's not the most vocal of leaders. He's French, so that happens. But HarryHook when he comes in has also played really well, so that's been good.

But as far as the tank line goes? NotE is never going to be a vocal guy, never has been. He plays a rally good D.Va -- he does his job. OGE and Trill have been switching time so I don’t know who’s better, and aKm and Taimou, they never really play together, so that's interesting. Maybe it seems like the coaching they have with Aero being the coach and him really lauding Zack as a good player -- so maybe that's the guy they want to build around. It’s kind of difficult. ... I can’t look at Dallas right now and say, "that’s the leader, that's the guy." They don’t really have one.

But I think talent wise, I think uNKOE deserves to be in that lineup. HarryHook playing as well as he did I think was a surprise to most people. But I think that this Dallas team, especially now that we’ve gone to a 2-2-2 meta, it’s severely lacking that carry DPS, which they thought is what EFFECT was going to be, but what’s life after EFFECT look like? With Dallas they don’t really have the hard carry. aKm has moments, Taimou has moments, but they’re both pretty inconsistent damage players.

Question: Is it time for Dallas to experiment with their starting six, or should they wait to experiment when they’re officially out of the playoffs or in the offseason?

Answer: I mean, look, they're out of the playoffs in everything except for math right now. When you look at this team, you don't really believe they're going to make it into the playoffs. And even if they do, does it matter? You can't really do much. You can't really make trades or anything right now, so I guess right now, and the league hates when I say this, but guys are playing for their life, they're playing for roster spots. You have to get out there and give individual performances and you have to see whose good or bad and I think in the offseason, there's probably going to be an enormous retool of the Dallas Fuel roster overall.

I don’t know who you keep, I don’t know who you get rid of, I don’t know the internals of all of that, but this is a team that was built largely on the EnvyUs core and every year it seems like a couple of those guys get shaved off and then they move to streamer roles or coaching roles or whatever, but if you look a this team, it just feels like the individual talent isn’t even there to cobble something together.

It’s a sad state of affairs when you look at Florida. Like, "oh wow, they have a lot of really talented players on this Florida team, they just haven't put it together." You look at Dallas, and you’re trying to think of a rebuild plan and I don’t even necessarily know what to start with this team.

Who's their best player? OGE has had some amazing moments, and then OGE disappears and OGE needs to take time off because he's not mentally where he wants to be. You could say that for almost every player on this team where they have these amazing high peaks and then then there's time where you forget that they exist. They're just some of the least consistent players in the entire league and somehow Dallas has assembled all of them together. Right now, Dallas is just not in a great spot.

Question: When Sigma is introduced to the professional scene, who do you think will be one of the stronger Sigma players in the Overwatch LEague?

Answer: I don't know. I've played him a little bit. He feels a bit strange to me. I'm not in love with his entire kit. His ultimate is really good. ...I think the designers intend Sigma to pretty much be a bunker buster, but I actually don't know where he fits in. I usually tend to just wait a while, let the pros figure it out and then form an opinion because those guys are way better than me. There' s couple of players in the league -- I always look at Rascal -- Rascal can figure out everything, so maybe Rascal can play it. He's played support, he's played damage, so maybe add tank to that.

Question: What are your predictions for the Fuel matches this week?

Answer: Hangzhou is a team that they could beat because Hangzhou is just in a downward spiral, but I think overall the Spark are still a more talented team. They just have some more strength on that roster, and don't think there's snowball's chance in hell that Dallas beats Guangzhou. Guangzhou is playing really well lately, even throw out the New York game -- and it felt like New York was just gifting them the series -- but Guangzhou has my favorite player, my rookie of the year candidate in Happy on it.

I think they're going to struggle with the Guangzhou team that has been putting out some really good performances. The problem for Dallas is both of those teams still have a ton to play for. So they're going to be bringing their A-game whereas you never know which kind of grade Dallas is going to bring. It could be close against Hangzhou, but I don’t think they're going to beat Guangzhou. I don’t think ti’s even going to be close against Guangzhou.

On Twitter: @TommyMagelssen and @hexagrams

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