New York Excelsior claimed they were confident coming into today’s do-or-die playoff battle with Philadelphia Fusion, calling the series “winnable” despite entering the day with a 1-0 series deficit.
But they sure didn’t play like it—at least not until it was too late.
Philadelphia Fusion completed the upset of the Overwatch League’s most dominant regular season team, beating New York Excelsior in a close 3-2 series to clinch a spot in the OWL finals.
The match was much closer than the 3-0 shellacking Fusion gave Excelsior on Wednesday to open the series—most of today’s five maps went down to the wire, but the mistakes that plagued New York on Wednesday eventually doomed them. Fusion made smarter and more effective hero swaps throughout the series, and while Excelsior were more proactive with their own swaps, they still found themselves on the back foot in many of today’s maps.
Excelsior seemed to lack the confidence that backed them throughout the season—they had an almost cocky attitude that they could win any game and any series no matter the situation. They’re usually the team others try to cheese, but today they seemed to feel like they needed to resort to off-meta tactics like a random Sombra opening on Lijiang Tower and Nanoblade combos to open maps that produced little results. While they pulled it together in the fourth and fifth maps, coming a few meters away from forcing another series, it wasn’t enough.
Ultimately Fusion looked superior in the kind of scrappy and drawn out fights that the series produced—their individual mechanics on a wide variety of heroes just edged out what New York brought to the table.
Whether it was the new metagame, the late-season break messing with New York’s competitive focus, or other factors, this wasn’t the New York team that posted a 34-6 regular season record.
The series opened on Junkertown, and Philly methodically plowed through the map, finishing with a decent time. New York looked flashy with some incredible combinations between their two snipers, Kim “Libero” Hae-seong on Hanzo and Kim “Pine” Do-hyeon on Widowmaker, using their ultimates to disrupt Fusion’s positioning and give them picks in open sight lines. But Fusion proved superior in grinding out the tank battles on the cart, with a little help from series MVP Lee “Carpe” Jae-hyeok on Tracer.
Excelsior bounced back to take their first map of the series on Lijiang Tower in a close back-and-forth bout. While Carpe seemed to get the best of Pine in numerous one-vs-one encounters, New York took the map.
King’s Row was next, and it should have been an Excelsior win. They were dominant on the map in the regular season while Philly struggled. But instead, Fusion wrecked Excelsior in one of the most one-sided maps of the entire season, finishing with 4:13 on the clock before preventing a desperate Excelsior from capturing the first point.
Excelsior finally showed some of their indomitable spirit on Hanamura. Despite falling fast in Fusion’s first attack, they put together a strong defense and eventually took the map, giving them a chance to continue their season. League MVP Bang “JJoNak” Sung-hyeon, in particular, had a strong game on Ana, landing some key sleep darts to open the door for New York’s win.
The last map, Dorado, was one of the closest fights of the season. On Wednesday, Fusion beat Excelsior after a scrappy three-minute long continuous fight on the payload in the final section of the map. Today was similar.
New York had 4:44 to finish the final segment of the map, but they ran into a brick wall. Fusion seemed stronger in the Brigitte battle on the ground, and Josue “Eqo” Corona’s flexibility proved key in some strong hero swaps to close out the map. With time winding down, New York got desperate and Pine swapped from Widowmaker to Hanzo. Eqo countered by moving off Brigitte and onto Pharah, and he dominated from the sky. With one minute left, Excelsior made a last-gasp effort, picking up a triple tank and triple support composition. But the desperation move prove ill-timed—Pine never had time to build Graviton Surge with one minute on the clock, and Eqo’s Pharah reigned supreme.
“Not even once we underestimated the strength of our opponents, New York and Boston, we pretty much gave everything we had into practice,” Eqo said in a post-game interview.
Fusion will meet a team with a similar story in the first OWL finals in New York next week. Fusion were the sixth and final seed entering the playoffs, but their final foes, London Spitfire, were the fifth. Few expected either team to succeed in the playoffs, but both seem to have hit their stride, and both teams have similar strengths.
They both feature two superstar DPS players and field likely the two most versatile players in the league, Eqo for Fusion and Park “Profit” Joon-yeong on Spitfire. They’ve both found success with flexing a tank or support to other heroes, with Choi “Bdosin” Seung-tae playing all three roles for Spitfire and Choi “HOTBA” Hong-joon shining on heroes like Roadhog and Tracer from the flex position. Both teams feature incredible mechanical skill and thrive in scrappy fights where a key individual play can make the difference.
It should be an incredible series.
But it won’t be the one many hoped for. New York Excelsior won’t get to play in front of the hometown crowd to finish the inaugural OWL season with a dominant performance. Instead, their 34-6 regular season will be a footnote as they finally met a meta they couldn’t handle.
New York Excelsior seemed immune to meta changes throughout the season, only faltering in the loss column in the final stage when they were admittedly taking a break from fully preparing for every match.
But the recent meta has moved the league’s MVP off the character on which he earned the award. JJoNak was a true outlier as Zenyatta this season, posting numbers that no player had the talent to replicate. But in the playoffs, he was forced to play heroes like Roadhog, Ana, and Moira on more and more maps. Even when he’s fielded Zenyatta, the prominence of double sniper compositions has left him in the respawn queue more often than not. While he’s an incredible player on heroes like Ana (his Sleep Darts were key to New York’s victory on Hanamura today), it just isn’t the same New York without him posting ridiculous kill totals on Zenyatta.
Overall, it’s a disappointing finish to what could have been a season for the record books. It’ll be tough for any team to replicate New York’s 34-6 regular season record, but ultimately, the reason teams play is to take the OWL title—and New York will have to wait until next year for another shot.
