Three teams dropped into the lower bracket in Americas, and each puts the same defeat in a different place — for ENVY, the only road left is a run of wins

One loss in the upper bracket and there is no room to lose again

The Americas Stage 2 Play-Ins are double-elimination. MIBR and FURIA won their upper semifinals and secured playoff spots, while ENVY and Evil Geniuses lost and dropped into lower round 3. A loss in the lower bracket means elimination.

VLR.gg reports that ENVY, now in the lower bracket, need five straight wins to reach Champions Shanghai. A single loss in the upper bracket turns directly into a requirement to win everything that is left.

Demon1 explains his individual numbers as the state of the team

ENVY's Demon1, asked about his individual form in an interview after the loss to MIBR, answered as follows.

"Individual performance depends on the team. If you're on a good team, you can stand out as an individual. If the whole team is bad, everyone is bad. I haven't changed anything about my routine. It's been the same for the last three years."

In the same interview, on what was different from the previous meeting, he said: "When we played them before the roles were different, and honestly we were a completely different team. This time we focused on ourselves. We practiced, we improved, we fixed our previous mistakes. Of course some of those mistakes are still there, but all we can do is keep working on it and keep improving."

On where ENVY stand now, he pointed to his teammates. "With nightz it's obviously firepower. His mechanics are really good. With GLYPH, his ideas are good. He's getting better as an IGL too, and he's trying to become the voice of the team. We follow his calls."

Cloud9's v1c talked about it as a problem with the whole team

Cloud9 lost 0-2 to BESTIA in lower round 1 on August 20 and ended their Stage 2 there. Lotus was 8-13 and Breeze 10-13. v1c pointed to a lack of preparation time after the Evil Geniuses match, BESTIA's reads on defense landing, and not being able to match the opponent's speed in gunfights.

"Maybe we just aren't functioning well as a whole. Or maybe it's all of those things at once."

He also made clear he intends to keep going. "I still want to compete. I haven't achieved what I set out to do." BESTIA, the team that knocked Cloud9 out, came through the Play-Ins as a Challengers side, and BESTIA themselves went out on August 23, losing 0-2 to G2 Esports.

G2 Esports' jawgemo points to the team coming back together

G2 Esports lost 1-2 to FURIA on August 17 and fell to the lower bracket, but have won two straight since. The first was against M80, where they took Breeze in overtime. jawgemo put the win down to the state of the team.

"JoshRT is leading us well, and we're really becoming one unit again."

On his own numbers, he said: "I'm not the type to care about stats. I care less about how I died than about whether I can fix that problem." He also relayed what JoshRT said before the match. "JoshRT put it well today. 'They're not going to beat us. If we lose, we lose to ourselves.'"

None of the three name individual skill itself as the cause

Line up the three explanations and the cause lands in a different place each time. Demon1 treats individual numbers as a result of the team's state and says he hasn't changed his routine. v1c questions whether the team is functioning at all as a whole. jawgemo says what matters is not how he dies but whether it can be fixed, and puts the win down to JoshRT's calls and the team playing together.

What the three have in common is that none of them place the cause on individual skill. On the losing side and the winning side alike, the explanations point at the structure of the team and at preparation. Judging by the lower bracket results so far, it is G2 Esports, the team that talked about coming back together, who are still standing.

ENVY and G2 Esports meet on August 24

ENVY and G2 Esports face each other directly in lower round 3 on August 24. That puts the two explanations given here up against one another. In the other match, Evil Geniuses face the winner of Sentinels vs KRÜ Esports on August 23.

The three interviews in this article were each conducted immediately after a different match. They are not three answers to the same question.