New York Excelsior were the giants of Overwatch League. The best team in the entire league with an astonishing record of consistency. Their end score by the time the first season was done was 34-6. They were in all four title stage matches and won two of them. They were the presumptive favorite to win it all. Then history repeated itself as at the very end of the line, they crumbled. They fell to the Philadelphia Fusion 2-0 in their series with the second series having them lose catastrophically on the final point. In that moment you could see the soul of LWBlue peaking out of the New York Excelsior.

LWBlue was a fixture in the Overwatch before the Overwatch League began. In that time, Apex was the biggest game in town and unlike Overwatch League it was an elimination tournament. For those who don’t know, it was two sets of round robin groups of four. The two best teams moved on, the two failing teams were eliminated (so hypothetically speaking, you couldn’t for instance go 0-40 and continue to play). The remaining four teams (or eight in season 1) then played off in an elimination bracket.

There were four seasons of Apex before Overwatch League started. Among the four, LWBlue played in three. They consistently showed great strength in the groups and then choked in the playoffs. It was like clockwork, but that narrative died down once Overwatch League started as the tournament was a large round robin group stage.

It carried over a little bit in the first stage title match of Overwatch League, but New York Excelsior were able to stamp out the idea that they were the same LWBlue of old in the subsequent stages where they dominated the league and won both title stage matches of stage 2 and stage 3.

However there was a particular caveat, a crucial piece of context that was different between those stage title matches and the playoff matches of Apex. It was that the title stage matches didn’t matter. There was money on the line and pride, but it didn’t eliminate you from the tournament. It didn’t force the players under the same stresses and pressures of a match where you life was on the line.

The true test to see if New York Excelsior had evolved from their LWBlue days was to be in the actual playoffs of the Overwatch League. As I said before, they were the presumptive favorite. Just look at their roster: Jong-ryeol ‘Saebyeolbe’ Park, Dp-hyeon ‘Pine’ Kim, Hae-seong ‘Libero’ Kim, Tae-hong ‘MekO’ Kim, Jun-hwa ‘Janus’ Song, Dong-gyu ‘Mano’ Kim, Seong-hyun ‘JJoNak’ Bang, Yeon-jun ‘Ark’ Hong, and Tae-sung ‘Anamo’ Jung.

Almost every individual player on the roster has been hailed as among the best players of their particular roles. Among the entire roster, they have three MVP candidates: JJoNak, Libero, and Saebyeolbe. JJoNak himself has shifted the entire paradigm of how people play Zenyatta and the entire meta around it. On top of that, many consider them to have one of the best coaches of the league in Hyeong-seok ‘WizardHyeong’ Kim.

The victory was supposed to be theirs for the taking. However there are a few things to note. First is that the New York Excelsior were on a downward dip by the end of Stage 4. While no one on the team has come out and said it, they were likely sandbagging. The reasoning behind this is that they had specific anti-strats for every team up until parts of Stage 3 and Stage 4. So if you assume that their ability to anti-strat didn’t mysteriously disappear, then they were likely taking it a bit easy.

The bigger factor to consider is the entire meta shift from Stage 4 to the playoffs. Overwatch is a game similar to something like Dota2 or League of Legends. The meta and style of play can shift overnight depending on what is in the patch. Hanzo became one of the most important heroes to have in every team and this made double sniper the best composition to run. This in turn made it far harder to play Zenyatta as it became too hard to pocket the Zenyatta which is why we’ve seen teams run single support. New York Excelsior were a team that built their team as a shrine to JJoNak’s Zenyatta and this was a meta seemingly created to stop him.

Even when you consider that though, New York should still have all of the pieces to run a double sniper with Pine, Saebyeolbe, and Libero. Between all three of them they have a great Widowmaker and Hanzo duo. Though it could also be said that this also enabled Philadelphia Fusion as their best players Jae-hyeok ‘Carpe’ Lee and Josue ‘Eqo’ Corona were incredible on the heroes as well.

Even with all of those caveats however, I suspect that the biggest weakness was in mentality. The greatest champions of all time have an anti-fragile mindset. Think upon the glory days of Lunatic-Hai and how they were able to clutch it out time and time again when pushed to the brink. This is something that has never been a hallmark of the LWBlue squad and the New York Excelsior were never tested in such a manner.

Going into the playoffs it was much the same. They seemed unable or unwilling to play the modern meta as they didn’t put Libero on Hanzo in the first best-of-five. While they played their style well, they were clearly a step behind. The most revelatory moment for me though was the first map on Dorado. Excelsior smashed through the first two points, but were unable to close the third. It was strange as theoretically they could have switched comps to a black hole ult (Reinhardt, Zarya, and Hanzo) to break through the final point. Instead they wasted their time trying to push through as if thinking they could somehow push through rather than make the smart move to guarantee it.

Going into the second best-of-five, many of these issues were fixed. They played more with the modern times and tried to use a combination of Saebyolbe, Pine, and Libero on the Hanzo. They had JJoNak flex to his Roadhog or Anna and make big plays. It was a tough fight that went all the way to the fifth map on Dorado.

New York Excelsior barely held on their defense at the final point, but it was enough to give them a good chance to win the game, especially as they steamrolled over the Philadelphia Fusion in the first two points and made good distance into the third. With five minutes left to go, it seemed logical that they would switch to a Zarya composition, charge her ult, win a massive team fight and push towards the end.

They didn’t and instead kept hammering away at the Philadelphia Fusion in a move that harkened back to their first best-of-five loss days earlier. As the time ran down you could feel the desperation leak out of the team. They overextended on fights, they threw away ults, they believed they could beat the pure mathematics of the sustain and spawn distances that Philadelphia Fusion had with their sheer skill. They failed and as time winded down. New York were under the gun and they had a few options. Pine could have kept on Hanzo and used the ult or they could have switched to a Zarya composition earlier. Instead New York did the worst compromise between the two. They didn’t use the ult and they had Pine switch to Zarya far too late to actually impact the game. It was an easy clean up after for the Philadelphia Fusion at that point as they closed out the map and ended the run of the New York Excelsior.

Heraclitus once said that our character was out fate. That who we were as people defined the decisions we took that defined our lives. In the case of New York Excelsior, they were defined and are still defined by their inability to play under pressure. They were by far the best team, they had some of the best players, and were miles ahead of the opponents. However under those stage lights, under the largest pressure of their entire seasons, their throats constricted. Though the lineup and name has changed, you could see the shades of LWBlue came forth as New York Excelsior fell. A sad, but strangely fitting end.

Related Articles: