yay’s coach says competitive Valorant failures boil down to one “mental” issue

Bleed Esports Valorant head coach Nikola ‘LEGIJA’ Ninić revealed what went wrong with the VCT Pacific team in 2024 and what kept Jaccob ‘yay’ Whiteaker from returning to his OpTic Gaming form.

In an interview with Duncan ‘Thorin’ Shields, the former Counter-Strike coach laid out how internal issues and the pressure of being a star player caused yay to have a terrible 2024 VCT season.

LEGIJA, the architect behind Bleed’s ascension to VCT Pacific, said yay had issues with the team’s in-game leader, Ngô ‘crazyguy’ Công Anh, almost immediately. The coach explained that he couldn’t bench yay over his beef with crazyguy because of how much money Bleed spent to sign the start player.

“[Yay] tried to solve the problem that he had with crazyguy. It didn’t work out, crazyguy was not really cooperative I’d say, and I think that was a big problem,” LEGIJA said.

The German coach also said yay’s “mental” was holding him back from playing his best as the player would dominate scrims, but overthink everything during stage matches.

“The moment he gets on the stage, the pressure hits him so hard that he loses himself completely,” LEGIJA.

Yay also did not do himself any favors outside of stage matches to help alleviate the pressure to perform, as the coach claimed the North American player would go on social media and seek out posts about himself.

The former OpTic Gaming star would also attempt to analyze upcoming opponents’ previous matches, which would also cause him to overthink what the enemy was doing during the game. This often caused him to make calls and plays during pivotal rounds that the team did not practice.

“This guy is overthinking everything, every f**king bullsh*t,” the coach said.

Regarding in-game criticisms, LEGIJA said yay was a great fragger but lacked the aggressive tendencies to play Duelist at a high level.

The North American player has had a rough time in professional Valorant after an incredible two-year run with Envy/OpTic Gaming that saw him make multiple major tournaments, and win a Masters trophy.

In 2023, yay only won one match at the professional level across his time with Cloud9 and Disguised. The Masters Reykjavík 2022 winner matched that win total in 2024 with Bleed. Yay is now a restricted free agent and could be on the move to a new team again for the 2025 VCT season.