ElIGE: "The aura of the team is incredible, everyone is going crazy. This Major has been so fun"

EliGE is headed to the Austin Major playoffs as the United States' sole representative.

Entering the BLAST.tv Austin Major with superstar stand-in Oleksandr "⁠s1mple⁠" Kostyliev in tow, expectations for FaZe were difficult to piece together. While the team certainly had the individual firepower to reach playoffs, whether or not they could make their stand-in situation work was crucial in deciding if they could do so.

Despite a shaky Stage 2, scraping through with a 3-2 record after losses to the likes of Legacy and 3DMAX, FaZe have looked in good form with s1mple in Stage 3, marching on to playoffs after claiming wins over MOUZ, Legacy, and The MongolZ.

Shortly after his team's qualification for the Austin Major playoffs, Jonathan "⁠EliGE⁠" Jablonowski spoke with HLTV regarding the hard-fought win over The MongolZ, what it has been like to play with s1mple again after nearly a decade, and his feelings about having the opportunity to play in front of the home crowd in Texas.

You can view the interview here.

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Congratulations, you're through to the playoffs. A comeback on Ancient against The MongolZ and then s1mple domination on Anubis. How are you feeling after getting through?

Super happy, really relieved. I'm happy we were able to that comeback on Ancient. We know how strong we can be on that map on both sides, and then on Anubis we just showed domination, honestly. 10-2 half on CT side, everyone was just playing super well.

You played Ancient against MOUZ, and Anubis against Aurora earlier. Struggled a bit, especially on Anubis, how do you feel you adjusted in this game to not have it go the same way?

Against Aurora, I feel our macro was pretty good. We were in so many advantage situations, it was just us being a little cold, not doing the best teamplay in a lot of those man-advantage situations.

It's a map we feel really confident on and we showed that today, we picked it against The MongolZ, looked really good on CT side when it's a T sided map, and overall we're just showing our best face. We're looking really good and leveling up every single stage and every single match.

Talk to me about that Ancient comeback as well, you were down 1-7, then 7-11. How did you turn it around?

Ancient is a map that can go both ways. We've even practiced them while we've been here, before the Major started, and we've had practices that went exactly like that where we struggled super hard on CT side, and then we just owned super hard on T side.

That was kind of in our heads, where we know that we can do this, we know we can make this comeback. We did it in practice multiple times, we did it yesterday on Ancient against MOUZ, so we just have that confidence that whatever side it is, we can win on it because it's not a map that is super dominant one way or the other. As long as we're playing well, Finn [karrigan]'s calling a great game, we can beat anybody.

I'm sure you've talked about it a lot in other interviews, but just tell me about playing with s1mple and what that has been like for you, especially after this kind of game.

Super fun. I love playing with Sasha [s1mple]. We have really good chemistry together and we play off of each other really well. Any time that I say like, 'I'm going to do this and that,' he's like, 'Okay, I'm going to compliment you' by doing whatever it is.

We're all on the same page, and on Anubis CT side is where that shows really well. Sasha is just zooming around, killing everyone left and right (smiles), and we're holding down the fort on the other side. Everyone is bouncing off of each other really well and the chemistry is showing.

He's very vocal as well, he's calling a lot of plays himself. I heard towards the end there that karrigan wanted to say something [during freezetime] and he kinda had to pause, he was like, 'Let me talk,' and s1mple was calling something else. [EliGE smiles]. Talk to me about how vocal he's been on the server and how that's helped.

Yeah, he's a very vocal player, and I think that's how AWPers always should be. They always need to be impose their will on the game, show what they want to do, how they want to get picks, how they want to have impact on the game. It's the strongest weapon in the game for a reason, and you want that player doing whatever they can to do it.

On T side, the main thing is they [The MongolZ] have really bad money, they are on the ropes right now, we just have to make sure we shut them down with whatever pushes they want to do because the CT side is so difficult on that map. You can't actually hold anything very well, so you have to just find timings to push whenever you're feeling that you're weak on one side. And when you have bad money, it can really feel like there's not really much that you can do.

You've played quite a few matches with him now, and it really seems he's starting to warm up into it. How have you seen him improve since he came back?

I've been saying it in a lot of interviews ever since Dallas, that he's been leveling up every single day. I see it in practice, he's hitting more shots. Macro-wise, he's always been pretty on point with what he wants to do and where he thinks he can get a pick, and he's just building on that confidence every game.

I think that the way that we're playing off each other is giving him more confidence to be able to do stuff, because obviously if he wants to do whatever play and we don't supplement that well, then it's going to be harder for him. So in the games where we're struggling, that shows a little bit more. But he's playing incredible, I think we have a really good shot at this Major, and we're going to see some fun games in the playoffs.

If I take you back about six months, I talked to you at the Shanghai Major after you were eliminated and you said you'd "do everything you could to make sure you were in a position to win [this] year." How are feeling about that now, especially after qualifying for the playoffs?

Really... I think relief is the best word for it, because this year has been really hard, really hard for me. I came into the team wanting to win, and then we just go onto the struggle bus super hard and it doesn't feel good for me either (laughs). I need to be able to do what I need to do to play well, the team has what they need.

We were finding difficulties trying to make it work so we can get to playoffs and win and everything like that. So now, after five or six months of struggles on the team, making it to playoffs of the Major with a real shot at winning this, it feels incredible. I'm really happy about it, I really think that we can win this. Everything feels much better now.

When this move happened, karrigan called it a "Hail Mary." How do you feel about that term now, in terms of how you've performed so far?

It was definitely accurate (smiles). It could have been really bad, maybe Sasha wasn't going to play super well, but you could just feel it as soon as he came back into the game, like how much hunger he had, how well he's playing in the macro. The mechanical parts, you can always just... especially coming from s1mple, like he's the best player in the history of Counter-Strike, and he came back really quickly. I'm happy that it worked out for the upside of that, for sure.

It's your first Major playoffs since Paris 2023, obviously you're the only American player left as well. What does it mean to you to be able to make it and play in front of the home crowd here?

It makes it a lot more special, definitely. I was thinking I haven't been in the playoffs in a while, and making it on home soil in the US... I know that the playoffs are going to be so sick, I think the crowd is going to be cheering for us super hard.

The aura of the team is incredible, everyone is going crazy. This Major has been so fun so far (smiles), everyone is just yelling at each other, back and forth. We'll have less of that on the stage because we can't hear each other, but it's really bringing the energy. Everyone has energy in all the matches, it's been really fun, and I'm really excited for it.