The Overwatch League offseason takes no prisoners when it comes to roster changes. Even one of the league’s most successful teams throughout the 2022 season hasn’t been spared from wide-scale changes.
In a surprise move considering the team’s second-place finish in the 2022 Grand Finals, the San Francisco Shock announced today that it is dropping four players from the team: damage dealers Samuel “s9mm” Santos and Kwon “Striker” Nam-joo and tanks Michael “mikeyy” Konicki and Colin “Coluge” Arai.
When the 2022 season kicked off with Overwatch 2’s five-vs-five setup, Coluge was the Shock’s only tank player, having stepped in to fill the shoes of veteran dynamo Matthew “super” DeLisi. Many fans didn’t expect much of the rookie tank, but his flexibility and versatility quickly started racking up wins for the Shock.
He was later joined by mikeyy, a midseason pickup meant to diversify the team’s tank hero pool. Mikeyy often had bad luck being subbed in on initial Control maps, but he became one of the team’s heroes during the recent Grand Finals. Playing for the entire series instead of Colulge, mikeyy went head-to-head with the Dallas Fuel and made space for his team.
Flex DPS s9mm was another victim of the Shock’s musical chairs, often being subbed in on Control maps at the start or end of a critical series. While he was a clutch choice for most of the season, by the end of 2022, all eyes were on one of San Francisco’s most iconic players, Striker.
Striker came out of retirement to rejoin the Shock, with whom he won two titles in 2019 and 2020. Though he only joined the team for the month of October, it was enough to push the two-time champions toward success. Striker was a key part of the team’s destruction of the Grand Finals lower bracket and made several clutch plays during the Grand Finals match.
With this change, the San Francisco Shock has effectively removed all Western players from its roster. This is a likely indication that the team will be moving to an all-Korean roster for 2023, especially considering several high-profile players from O2 Blast—the Shock’s academy team—will be eligible to compete next season.
