The date is the 26th of November, the map – Nuke. The teams are André ‘drop’ Abreu’s RED Canids, and Finn “karrigan” Andersen’s FaZe Clan – a clash of polar opposites that is meant to be a clean 2-0 win for the juggernaut that had made the finals of three out of the four CS2 Majors so far, but fate had something else in mind. FaZe had already shown signs of weakness against both NRG and NIP in the Best-of-1 matches, and following a series of underwhelming results at both CS Asia Championship 2025 & IEM Chengdu 2025, they looked mortal.
With Jakub “jcobbb” Pietruszewski still struggling to find his place on the team and Helvijs “broky” Saukants going through one of the worst moments of his career, FaZe were playing far from ideal Counter-Strike, finding themselves 11-12 down on Nuke, having already lost their own map pick of Mirage in a 7-13 fashion.
5.4.3.2.1..0.4 – boom. 0.4 seconds away. One unused smoke. One bad position for a defuse in a 1v1 situation. This is how close, yet how far RED Canids’ AWP-er Allan “history” Lawrenz was from defusing the bomb against karrigan and sending FaZe home, eliminating them from Stage 1 of the StarLadder Budapest Major, or shall I say – this is how close he was to saving FaZe Clan.
All of us remember what happened after that. The ultimate “FaZe Bullshit”. Back-to-back wins over RED Canids and Fluxo to make it out of Stage 1, a flawless 3-0 through Stage 2, and wins over Vitality, 3DMAX, Passion UA, MOUZ & NAVI to make it all the way to the Grand Final, where the magic would finally run out in the Best-of-5 clash against The Greatest Team in modern CS history – Team Vitality.
Regardless of their problematic 2025, FaZe were able to, in true FaZe fashion, make another Major Grand Final, making everyone believe once again, but was that truly a miracle, or a curse in disguise?
FaZe’s 2026 in numbers
After the miraculous run in Budapest, FaZe went into 2026 with the mission of proving that this new iteration with jcobbb as the new entry/anchor, and Twistzz as the main star on CT-sides would be worth sticking to, but they couldn’t. The year started with a 1-2 online loss to JW and the EYEBALLERS theBLAST Bounty 2026 Season 1, but it was difficult to put too much stock into the first game after a break, especially considering the online setting – however, what followed wasn’t pretty either. With over two weeks to prepare for IEM Krakow 2026, FaZe were barely able to best s1mple’s BC.Game with a 2-1 score, but were completely dominated by both 3DMAX and MOUZ, exiting in 9-12th.
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Next was PGL Cluj-Napoca 2026. A 2-0 win over an AWP-less Heroic, followed by 1-2 losses to Falcons and PARIVISION, and a 0-2 to Astralis. Then it was EPL S23, where FaZe beat Monte, but lost to G2 Esports, paiN, and Astralis – bombing out 12-14th.
Blast Open Rotterdam was FaZe’s opportunity to strengthen up their IEM Cologne Major position. Getting a couple of wins would put them in a spot where, regardless of not being guaranteed a spot in Stage 3, they would’ve been able to get another opportunity of creating something out of nothing at a Major. Sadly, after 1-2 losses to Aurora & Tyloo, FaZe found themselves outside of the Major invites zone, forced to attend some smaller VRS LAN tournaments in pursuit of a miracle. And that wasn’t pretty either.
At DraculaN Season 6, FaZe went in with a single goal – winning the event, and easing the stress towards the end of the season, but outside of a 2:0 win over Romanian side aimclub, karrigan & co. conceded back-to-back losses to Passion UA, and fnatic, dropping even lower in the VRS standings – 30th to be exact.
Just like that, FaZe was forced to attend the HLC Belgrade PRO 2026 LAN event, as well as PGL Bucharest 2026, simultaneously. That’s right, traveling between Belgrade and Bucharest – FaZe’s last ditch effort of making the Major requires them to win the LAN event in Serbia, as well as to win all of their games in PGL until the cut-off, and even that wouldn’t guarantee reaching the goal, as FaZe are still outside of the invite zone.
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Tactical Incompetency:
Out of their 19 Bo3’s in 2026, FaZe have lost 13, beating only BC.Game, Heroic, Monte, aimclub, Bee, and Drama. And that’s not all, since the start of the year FaZe has:
- The 5th worst CT-side in the Top 30 (48.8% W)
- Worst OpK % in the Top 30 (43%)
- 2nd worst MultiKill % (0.74 P/R)
- 2nd worst 5v4 Conversion rate (67.5%)
All of this, while still having frozen (16th highest rated player vs. Top 30 in 2026, 12th on CT-sides) playing some of the best CS possible for a player in a similar position. Even with the occasional pop-off games from Twistzz, FaZe is looking dry. The individual struggles of both broky and jcobbb keep haunting them, communication & cohesion seem to be far from ideal, and FaZe’s tactical approach to games does not seem to be evolving, leading to the removal of 3-year-long coach – Filip “NEO” Kubski, and the temporary promotion of the team’s analyst – GruBy, to the position of an interim-coach.
Considering its firepower, experience, and pieces – FaZe seems to be way off from where it should be. Playing outdated Counter-Strike, struggling to establish any real level of consistency, and showing what an elite team could look like, if playing one-dimensional Counter-Strike.
However, this is not anything new. Signs were visible way before 2026, way before the Budapest Major, and during FaZe’s performance in Stage 1, prior to the RED Canids game.
And so, we go back to the 0.4 seconds. That defuse that could’ve had FaZe eliminated in Stage 1, putting them in a position where changes would’ve been inevitable, and maybe, just maybe – those changes could’ve led to a better time. A time where FaZe doesn’t miss out on a Counter-Strike Major for the first time since entering the game back in 2016 when fox, Maikelele, aizy, rain & jkaem went into the MLG Columbus 2016 with the FaZe jerseys on their backs.
16 Majors, 10x Playoff appearances, and 5 consecutive playoff appearances with 3x silver medals out of the last 4 Major tournaments. FaZe Clan’s Major Bullshit might finally be coming to an end, but regardless of the logo carrying real magic, and this team being the only one that could probably still turn the tides in their favor and make it to Cologne, one thing is for sure – one more miracle should not mean another couple of months of “opportunities”, “chances”, and “time” for a team that is far from the level of the real identity of FaZe Clan.
