The second day of the Overwatch League playoffs began with the Watchpoint desk announcing the DPS and support role stars, with four of the five Atlanta Reign players earning their recognition. That ended up being the only thing the Reign won in Toronto.
The Reign, the No. 1 seed and much-predicted eventual champions, became the first squad to be eliminated from the OWL 2023 playoffs when they were swept by the London Spitfire. Despite their regional and international dominance over the entire year, the team struggled to adapt to their opposition in the new meta, leading to two consecutive and brutal losses to end a season in which they had never previously lost two times in a row.
Looking back at Atlanta’s performance, they had multiple issues that led to their early departure. To start, the meta shift from the Sept. 7 update, which teams had limited time to get used to, left many players uncomfortable as to how they’d perform in the playoffs. Atlanta chose to stick to Sombra play from Lip and the Doomfist and Winston from D0NGHAK. This plan started out strong, but the Hangzhou Spark made some key swaps of their own and reverse-swept the Reign.
Whether it was overconfidence in the team or lack of experience in the meta, the Atlanta Reign began their second match against the London Spitfire much like how they ended their series against the Spark: poorly. Despite their plan to run the Doomfist to counter Hadi’s Reinhardt, the movement and coordination around the Symmetra on London was too much to deal with.
It felt like pure desperation when Hawk was brought in to replace D0NGHAK, especially since he just ended up playing more Doomfist and only played around a minute of Orisa. It didn’t change much, as the Reign lost the final map and were eliminated from the tournament. Not only are the predicted favorites out, they’re out first, breaking most prediction brackets with their losses.
The Reign did show more weakness in the Summer Stage than the Spring Stage, but they still were by far the best team of 2023. Their overall record, including the Midseason Madness tournament, was 17-3, only losing 16 maps in that entire span. Then, in the OWL 2023 playoffs, they went 0-2, and lost six maps in a row.
It was a meteoric fall for the Atlanta Reign, for the team that everyone will remember as the best team of the 2023 regular season, but the first out in Toronto.
