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I predicted Philadelphia would win a series in their Overwatch League playoffs face off with New York and they’ve certainly done it, with the first set of matches going to the Fusion.
This matchup started off on Dorado with Carpe (Jae-hyeok Lee) getting an incredible first pick onto NYXL’s main healer Ark (Yeon-jun Hong) forcing New York to pull back on defence. The Fusion managed to push the payload almost to the end but were stopped just shy of the last point.
This didn’t really matter as New York didn’t seem to be able to come back from this incredible start from Philadelphia. It was close but in the end, they couldn’t get the payload quite as far as Fusion did despite pulling out Pine’s (Do-hyeon Kim) fantastic Genji and less impressive Doomfist.
This really set the tone as though some of the maps were close between the two teams Philadelphia ended up clutching it out to win 3-0 against New York – surprising everyone.
Part of the reason for this could be Excelsior seemed determined not to play Hanzo despite their DPS Libero (Hae-seong Kim) having one of the better records in the league. Another star player, Pine, also didn’t deliver quite what we expect from him on the sniper role.
He’s an intimidating player but he seemed to miss far more than what’s usual for him. When he was good he was definitely Pine levels of good, but so much of the match when we saw the camera from his perspective was clicking around the heads of the enemy team rather than on them.
In my prediction for the series between these teams, I said the win condition for Excelsior was Libero and Pine showing up and they just kind of didn’t.
Team captain Saebyoelbe (Jong-ryeol Park) picked up the slack when he was subbed in, so maybe we will see more of him in the matches to come.
There’s not much more to analyse than this – Philadelphia were simply better.
EQO (Josue Corona) had a mad Pharah and Brigitte play that New York seemed incapable of dealing with. Their team as a whole was calling plays, focusing down members of the Excelsior faster than it seemed New York could counter. It was a clear win and I’m still shocked.
Part of me just can’t believe how easily Philadelphia won it and I’m tempted to claim New York are still holding back, waiting to take it all in their next matchup – still hiding their plays and strategies.
It just seemed too easy for Philadelphia which isn’t what we expect when coming up against what is obviously the best league in the team.
I don’t want to make any solid claims of what we are going to see when these teams play each other again, but the Excelsior have to learn from this.
They have got to get it together because if they’re being railroaded this easily they’re not going to have a chance next time. On the other hand, the Fusion will ride this emotional high onto the next matches and will probably be an even tougher opponent.