Enable puts LA Thieves’ struggles down to players “slumping” at crucial time

LA Thieves, despite the backing of CoD legends Matthew ‘Nadeshot’ Haag and Jordan ‘JKap’ Kaplan, have experienced a turbulent first season in the CDL. But what’s going wrong for the Thieves, and will the introduction of Huke and SlasheR actually solve their problems?

The excitement generated from 100 Thieves’ acquisition of a Call of Duty League spot looks disproportionate in comparison to the waves they’ve made in the league. While not necessarily a disaster, the Thieves have found consistency incredibly difficult to come by.

Initial responses saw Venom and Drazah drafted in as SlasheR struggled to acclimatise to online play. There was some promise shown but, ahead of the return to LAN at the Stage IV Major, Huke and SlasheR have returned to replace both the young-guns.

The new roster made their debut on June 11, but lost out to a resurgent ROKKR. There’s still the Stage IV Major left to play, but the Thieves’ chances of a favorable finish will be reduced considerably if they do not start in the Winners’ Bracket.

Plenty of theories have circulated about their struggles but, for Enable, it simply comes down to players “slumping” at the wrong time.

Speaking on Reverse Sweep, Enable put the Thieves’ main struggles down to a lack of composure when it really matters: “Drazah hasn’t looked good, Venom hasn’t… none of them have really looked good. I don’t know if there’s any issues behind the scenes with the overall team vibes. More importantly, the players just look like they’re slumping. Multiple players are slumping at the same time and this is not the time of the year where you want to be.”

In contrast, Pacman actually highlighted the org’s previous roster changes. As we now know, the organization’s response has been more roster changes.

Whether that can arrest the slump remains to be seen but, if Thieves are going to pull up any trees at Stage IV, they’ll need all players to put in better performances than they’ve shown so far.