Editorial: Is it time for broky to be The Guy, and is FaZe the place?

broky's race on FaZe appeared to be run until he was dramatically returned to the line-up. That time apart may have done him some good.

Some guys are just guys. Regular Joes. Part of the pack. Soldiers. Guys who help you win, but don’t generally win games on their own. This isn’t an insult, and it’s not even a limiting factor. You need at least a couple of regular Joes to win, because otherwise you’re a team of supervillains with no goons to protect the base.

SK had Epitacio "⁠TACO⁠" de Melo. Barcelona had Pedro. LeBron’s Lakers had JaVale McGee.

Some guys are The Guy. You know who we’re talking about here. Oleksandr "⁠s1mple⁠" Kostyliev, Mathieu "⁠ZywOo⁠" Herbaut, Danil "⁠donk⁠" Kryshkovets, Justin "⁠jks⁠" Savage on Renegades, Ismailcan "⁠XANTARES⁠" Dörtkardeş, Egor "⁠flamie⁠" Vasilyev twice a year. Guys who aren’t just there to be part of the reason you win, but the sole reason.

The Guys thrive when winning or losing depends on them. They want the high-pressure roles, high-action spots, and to be in the high-value moments. These are people you build around and trust that they will win you rounds, games, trophies, fame and women (the last one might be a pipe dream).

Also, you should never go backwards, generally. Returns are sexy, romantic, filled with storylines — but just like romantic relationships, there was always a reason you broke up.

In the case of FaZe and Helvijs "⁠broky⁠" Saukants, it was a one-way break-up — in my experience, most are — but actually, it feels like both could have benefited. FaZe need a change and broky looks like he needs a reset. It works for everyone.

Except, they’ve all changed their mind — and that’s a real shame. Not just for FaZe, who could have signed s1mple for 50% Counter-Strike reasons and 50% aura farming reasons (though given Finn "⁠karrigan⁠" Andersen’s quotes, perhaps his signing would have been exclusively a rebound to upset the ex), but also for broky, who is one of the most interesting profiles around and could have been a very, very exciting star for someone else.

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karrigan: "Sometimes a small punishment can help a player"

This return, like so many, seems doomed to fail. It’s patently obvious that FaZe wanted rid of him, and it’s quite hard to get yourself back in the zone to play with players who kicked you a few months ago and would have kept you on the bench if the s1mple situation had worked out better.

Even if it’s not s1mple, FaZe were clearly looking for something different, and so your time is limited to the moment that they find someone different. This feels like a temporary solution, and one that only hurts broky’s career. He could be spending that time aura farming in tier 2 to get himself a move back to the top, or kicking back and relaxing until someone wants him.

Absence makes the contract grow fatter, after all.

broky shouldn’t be on FaZe — he should go and be The Guy for someone.

Who, or what, is The Guy?

Is this broky? Well, not yet, but it’s the role he was born to be in. Think about it; cool under pressure, most expensive weapon, big moment player who is good on stage, so-unmarketable-he’s-marketable presence — he has the full package.

Perhaps most importantly, he’s a really fun player to watch when he’s not being kept on a leash.

broky could go and be the same player for another top team, but it doesn’t feel like there’s an obvious fit. Selfishly, we want to see him off the leash and empowered to go and be the slow-motion clutch maniac he was born to be.

Go and be The Guy, broky.

Why would broky be a good star player for your team?

It’s easy to look at one side of broky’s game and either write him off as a genius or a madman. Few players straddle the line between insanity and brilliance like he does; one moment he’s winning an impossible 1vs3 using the AWP like Jesper "⁠JW⁠" Wecksell might use a Sawed-Off back in the day (or indeed, at times, the AWP), and the next he’s crouched on top of the hut on Nuke's A site with his first AWP of the half, fully blind, trying to noscope someone.

It’s that part of his brain, though, that allows him to be a sensational clutcher. broky won 70% of his 1vs1s in 2024 and just over 65% in 2023, but it’s his 1vs2 stats that really shine. Since 2019, broky has won 178 1v2s — in the same time frame, ZywOo won 187, and he’s The Guy on the best team in the world. On top of that, ZywOo doesn’t — or, well, didn’t — have Robin "⁠ropz⁠" Kool taking up his clutch space.

The Latvian’s ability and willingness to do something unexpected, combined with his outrageously unshakeable composure and seeming belligerent denial of pressure make him an absolute nightmare to clutch against. You can’t just play ‘the right way’ against broky, because he’s not going to respect it. He is a world-class clutcher who levels up on stage — he was regularly FaZe’s best player in big games, or at least a big contributor — who also ranks as one of the best AWPers off of the big green gun, too.

In some ways, he’s quite reminiscent of Tomáš "⁠oskar⁠" Šťastný. A flashy lockdown AWPer in post-plants with a tendency to do something a little bit crazy when the situation required. We often remember oskar as being far more aggressive on the T side, and indeed he had some memorable moments, but his opening kill attempts are not dissimilar to broky.

As a support AWPer, only three players on top 20 teams threw flashes more frequently than him in 2024, though his success rate was middling. This is almost certainly a team style thing, though, as Russel "⁠Twistzz⁠" Van Dulken also had similar numbers, and when you watch FaZe they throw a lot of speculative flashes to gain map control. The overarching point is that broky does his part in the early round with regard to setting up his team, but this does bring us to one of the big downsides with broky.

Concerns and potential pitfalls

Both in 2024 and so far in 2025, broky has charted in the bottom three for opening kill attempts and the lowest of any AWPer. If you’re going to be The Guy, you’re probably going to have to take a round by the throat sometimes. You can’t always trust your riflers to get you into late game situations the way you could trust Håvard "⁠rain⁠" Nygaard, Twistzz and karrigan to do so.

It’s definitely not a deal breaker; it’s just something you have to plan for. You have to build around broky in a way you don’t have to build around other AWPers whose playstyles are less specialised. This is partially why he’s a tough sell for a big team that both don’t want to change their style entirely, and don’t want to do so for a player who is a little flawed — but it’s less of an issue for a team of the tier below.

There’s a concept in trading card games that are ‘build-around’ cards; these tend to be exceptionally powerful in the right circumstances, but can’t just be plugged into any old deck and maintain their power. broky is similar: A player who requires resources, patience and some unusual teambuilding, but can be as devastating as the best players in the world in the right situation.

This is a player who was MVP at an IEM Katowice, having won nine 1v2s and averaging a 1.30 Rating. The ceiling is there, but there’s a reason he isn’t being courted by the biggest teams in the world.

His form of late has been, to be kind, patchy. He’s not been a consistent late-round threat since ropz’s departure to Vitality, and from watching him, you see him miss some absolute dollies that you’d expect even a makeshift AWPer to hit. He’s only managed a 1.1 or better in two events so far this year, and when you’re on a team with big expectations and the best player ever on speed dial, that’s just going to get you benched.

But what if the expectations weren’t so high?

Finding a soft landing spot

Maybe what broky needs is just to be The Guy for once.

There’s nobody better at getting multiple profiles, multiple big egos and lots of different styles to work together than karrigan, but even he struggled with FaZe’s shift from back-loaded firepower once the more aggressive Jonathan "⁠EliGE⁠" Jablonowski joined. FaZe had three of the deadliest late-round players in the world, and swapping out ropz for EliGE meant a change in style was necessary. broky struggled.

He might not be the most adaptable, and he can be inconsistent — which, as we mentioned, is why it’s hard to see a big team taking him on. Those downsides, though, don’t really matter to a team that can afford to build around him.

If you’re going to put Jinzo in your deck, you’ll only have an advantage if you’re not playing any traps.

In the opening to this article, we mentioned jks during his stint with Renegades, and that’s what we’re talking about here. Not necessarily a direct metaphor — broky to FlyQuest would be great fun for all involved, but now that jks is back on this team he is likely to directly cut into broky’s space and stardom — but him in a role where he has carte blanche to flex his muscles and do exactly what he wants to do.

You have to indulge the madness and the genius to truly get the best out of broky, after all.

We saw NA teams fall apart at the seams at the last Major, and there’s not a single one that wouldn’t like a star AWPer. Wildcard recently switched away from Love "⁠phzy⁠" Smidebrant to Sebastian "⁠fr3nd⁠" Kuśmierz, which is an interesting move, but imagine if broky was given the space to let loose on that team with not a care in the world?

Wildcard were not that far away from being a top 10 team, and a little nudge might have just done it. They might not be quite as attractive a prospect as FlyQuest — especially given recent developments to that team —, but they’re in desperate need of a totemic figure to hang their hat on.

So what if he’s inconsistent? It’s better to be inconsistent with a high ceiling than consistently good-but-not-great, especially in an esport that is all one-off tournaments without a real ‘league’ to compete in.

Håkon "⁠hallzerk⁠" Fjærli is serviceable, and certainly not Complexity's — sorry, Passion UA's — biggest issue, but they need more than just one change to really challenge at the top, and that’s perfect for a player who needs a team built around him. Obviously, you’re going to have to try and convince broky to take a pretty big pay/ego cut if you want to maintain your current structure, but is that any less likely than this roster turning it around from a 1-3 exit in the first stage of the Major?

Liquid are probably too entrenched in their style, and Roland "⁠ultimate⁠" Tomkowiak is the complete opposite to broky in terms of aggression, so that one feels unlikely. Where it gets most exciting is M80, who have at times felt like they might be an AWPer away from being a top team.

Even outside of NA, there are a lot of teams on the brink of being a good team that broky could be the main man for. If BIG were willing to switch back to English (again), broky would be an instant upgrade and should probably be allowed freedom in a system that has rarely given it to its stars.

The issue with BIG could be his ability to get along with Johannes "⁠tabseN⁠" Wodarz in and out of the server, and BIG do have a strict system, so even if broky should demand more space from a team like that, chances are he wouldn't get it. BIG, though, have been disappointing for a long time, and have had some previous experience with more ‘maverick’ style players. XANTARES was excellent on this team, for example.

It’s not going to happen, but we would love to see BIG let loose a little.

The ship has kind of sailed on GamerLegion, but that would have been a cool fit. They have some excellent players, stars even, but no real game breaker. There’s no… Guy. Oldřich "⁠PR⁠" Nový is very, very good, but he doesn’t have the raw star power that a top-of-his-game broky has. Very few do, in fairness. GamerLegion would have to change their style slightly, of course, but that’s the whole point: broky is a player who, when built around, can do some crazy things and take a team like GamerLegion to the next level.

It’s not a sure-fire upgrade, but you have to take a risk to progress — and few have the upside of the Latvian Laser.

We sort of joked about FlyQuest earlier, but there’s something nice about imagining broky being let completely loose in a team that seems to match his personality. They wouldn't have been able to afford him, and he's in one of the roles they don't need to improve on immediately, but it would have been cool to see him on a team like this one with more free rein.

This obviously seems less likely now that jks is back, as mentioned before, and will probably be given that late round freedom, but then again, FaZe had ropz and broky. jks and broky sounds like a deadly duo in the same way, though FlyQuest don’t have that reliable up-front power to get them into the situations that ropz and broky won with their eyes closed.

Could this really happen?

It’s rare you’ll see a player take a big step down in perceived team level and likely reputation, salary, and chances at glory, but if broky really wants to get back to a position where he is feared again, he might need to take a step back.

When Emil "⁠Magisk⁠" Reif was cut from North, he spent time on OpTic, where he absolutely fried NA until Astralis were forced to sign him. karrigan played for Envy in what now feels like a bit of a fever dream. Keith "⁠NAF⁠" Markovic dropped to Renegades after his stock dropped. There is precedent for this, and broky seems like the exact type of player who should thrive when the team is made for him to go crazy.

Whether or not he’s the type of guy to look at a team like M80 and think he can — or should — drag them to the top and reignite his career, or if he’s happy to be a regular Joe on a better team is something we’re not sure of yet. We’d like to see the former, though.

An on-form broky is an exhilarating prospect as a viewer, and an on-form broky who is killing it on a tier two team is going to get picked up by a big org within months, too, so it’s not like it would be a bad career move, either.

We’ve only ever seen him in the FaZe ecosystem, and that is a cause for concern in some ways and exciting in others. While karrigan is uniquely good at bringing out something great in everyone, maybe there’s a whole new system out there that can elevate broky back to the levels we’ve seen before or even beyond.

broky could have been destined to be The Guy somewhere, but instead, we get an ill-fated, probably temporary return to FaZe. That’s a shame for all of us, not least for broky himself. Maybe we’re all wrong and karrigan’s "small punishment" is actually the fix that brings back the old broky. He has certainly looked more like himself since the return, but we’re still left wondering ‘what if’ on broky’s career.

We’d just like to see him be The Guy one more time. Is that too much to ask for?