Russ' Roundup (W1)
Russ | May 4, 2026
Rust Never Sleeps… And it's Already Claiming Victims This Season
Welcome to the 2nd ever Russ' Roundup. Majors Week 1 was last night and it was illuminating.
ABO lead by OMB absolutely crushed the talented but dijointed Capaliers squad. OMB's 21 caps easily outpaced the entire Capaliers team (19). LBT smacked around a Fly-less SCP team. And finally Alpha and company held a migrained BDL squad to just 12 caps on the night.
But the story of week 1? Rust is real. Teams better start grinding.
1) Okthen — Tourney's help keep top players sharp?
The following players all played a lot of minutes in the ToT this offseason:
| Player | Minutes |
|---|---|
| OMB | 773 |
| Alpha | 638 |
| Button | 577 |
| BallSaget | 545 |
| Irony | 271 |
| NoSwag | 271 |
| CC | 227 |
| ASAP | 225 |
Meanwhile… Nameless = 0, Syn = 0, Meowza = 40, Arbybear = 65, fender = 66, Bam = 104.
Maybe it's not a perfect correlation because Messi, WW, Taurus and Omni all played a good amount of tourney minutes and they struggled a bit in W1, but clearly there's some strong correlation here.
2) CarrotCake for Ball of Fame?
Obviously based on my mock drafts, I considered Alpha and CC to be the 2 best players in the draft, but I had very little faith in CC's ability to whip a 0 TC offense into shape to give his squad a fighting chance — and oh boy do I look stupid right now.
Sure it's just one week AND SCP was missing Fly, but wow what a performance. I spent a week saying Irony couldn't hang in the highest tier and all he did was bring in 14 caps while being the hold leader for the week. Insanely impressive and massive props to Irony.
CarrotCake should already be in the BoF btw.
3) The Uncomfortable NameLEss Discussion
Remember that offseason I went off the rails annoying everyone to remind them that I was O-restricted and that I should not be drafted? Well yeah, there's a reason. Players like Nameless, Phreak, Gman, myself, Trapsin, Arbybear, etc. — players that ONLY ever play defense — really, really suck on offense.
NameLEss has pretty good mechs and is decently jukey in the midfield, but holy hell you cannot just expect a career defender to turn into a competent offender overnight (especially when they do not scrim). Good offenders just have a natural ability to capitalize on scoring chances.
fender and Nameless had the exact same amount of hold last night, but fender capped 10 times... Nameless did not cap. It's a small sample size and caps are an extremely fickle stat in my opinion, but I don't think Nameless on offense is going to work out this majors season…
Poor humble isopod.
4) 5 Maps per week?
Going to take some getting used to…
5) Minors Draft Thoughts
I don't know when I became an elitist asshole, but honestly my first thought post-draft looking at the rosters was… Oh wow, these are kind of weak minors teams. I get that it's a summer season and there's a larger percentage of new players than usual.
But digging in deeper, there's some really good squads. I think Vic, Kep, and Selfy's teams all will be very formidable. I'm shocked XCV went for zero. Imortallix is very good, but I think it's a disservice to make rookies play minors right off the bat.
Goblin is going to get called up at some point, btw. Spheroid makes me irrationally angry and loves to cause a circus, so unsurprisingly there's drama there.
Russ Week 1 Rankings
| Rank | Player |
|---|---|
| 1 | Alpha |
| 2 | OMB |
| 3 | CC |
| 4 | Messi |
| 5 | Meowza |
| 6 | BDL |
