Lord almighty, FaZe. Even for you, this is cutting it fine.

FaZe squeaked - and we mean SQUEAKED - through the opening stage of the Major with close wins over RED Canids and Fluxo. RED Canids had series points on Nuke for a 2-0. A 2-0!

We know your whole thing is only playing with your backs against the wall, but in that case it’s best not to face it against tier three fodder.

frozen bailed them out HARD with 39 kills on Nuke, including two massive rounds in overtime to just about power FaZe to a win, and limp on to a 2-2 game. Fluxo weren’t that far off taking them down either, but they did also lose nine rounds in a row on map three to throw a 10-4 advantage, so maybe growing one single pair between them may have helped.

FaZe weren’t the only team to be entirely underwhelming, though. GamerLegion haven’t been great for a little while now, but going out 1-3 at this stage is pretty damning.

Even sl3nd couldn’t help but stick the knife in.

Legacy, too, didn’t only not go 3-0 like expected, but went out 2-3. Probably the most disappointing team of the lot considering their win at CAC, it now really throws into doubt as to whether they were any good at all.

And considering they’re a Brazilian team, the answer is most likely “probably not”.

Let’s get onto some teams who weren’t rubbish. M80, FlyQuest - you get a gold star. 3-0 for both teams, and FlyQuest especially were mightily impressive.

We haven’t seen Vexite show up much internationally just yet, but he was sensational in this stage, and if he can keep it up we might finally see some potential fulfilled.

M80 were pretty good too, it’s just… their only BO3 win was over NRG, with daps. Who could possibly lose to NRG with daps?

Oh. NIP and FaZe did. Never mind. M80 are winning the whole thing.

NRG and Fluxo both went from 2-0 to 2-3, which is obviously horrible but not entirely unexpected.

B8 looked like they were a bit too good for this stage, which is nice to see as they can be very inconsistent.

NIP recovered from losing to NRG to win three in a row, including over FaZe, and look good enough. Not great, not rubbish, but good enough. Oh, and the hatewatchers were denied a generational watch by fnatic. How miserable.

Stage two starts tomorrow, and we expect FaZe will be out by Tuesday. No hate, just… man, they’re hard to watch.