Florida Mayhem GM talks future of team and Overwatch League
Photo: Robert Paul for Blizzard Entertainment
The Overwatch League is now in full swing for the 2020 season. Last week New York and Dallas played host to the first home stands for opening weekend. Week 2 will only include half as many matches because of the rescheduling of the Chinese teams. Of the matches that will be played this week in Philadelphia, the Florida Mayhem will be making their 2020 debut. This will also mark the first time the Florida Mayhem have played in front of an away crowd.
We got to talk with General Manager of the Florida Mayhem, Albert Yeh about the new roster and what we can expect from the team this year. Since the inaugural season of the Overwatch League the Florida Mayhem have gone through a few roster changes. Last year they began to transition to a fully Korean roster as they released players for their original line-up but kept on DPS players Jeongwoo “Sayaplayer” Ha, Sangbum “BQB” Lee and support player Junsoo “Kris” Choi. Through the 2019 season they added more talent to their roster including heavy hitter tank player Panseung “FATE” Koo. Rounding out the roster as 2020 came around they picked up DPS Kim “Yaki” Jun-ki and support Gang “Gangnamjin” Nam-jin.
Speaking about the new roster they have Yeh said, “I think this is the most talented roster we’ve fielded in the three years that I’ve been here. I’m very excited for it, for us to win a lot more matches this season.” That alone isn’t too high of a bar considering the Florida Mayhem came in at 20th place in the 2019 season with six wins and 22 losses. Just winning more games isn’t where Yeh and the Mayhem are setting the bar though. “I think the personal expectation is we reach play-ins. So that’s the goal for the season, is to go from the bottom to the play-ins. That’s the bar that I’ve set internally for myself and the team.”
Looking forward to the rest of the 2020 season Hero Pools are going to have a huge impact on the league. We asked Yeh what his thoughts were on the changes coming in March to both the game and the league. “I’m not a fan of the week to week changes. I’d rather have a little bit longer of a period, like two weeks maybe,” Yeh said. He goes on to explain that he feels like hero pools being added in so quickly is a bit of an over-correction in response to how long GOATs dominated the meta. He continued, “But I still think it’s overall a positive change. I think the game’s fun to watch. We’ll see what happens in March when the hero pools become active.”
You can check out the full interview below. We also ask Albert about the changes the league is experiencing in caster and analyst turn over. Yeh also shares his thoughts on Overwatch 2 with us.
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