McGravy: "It sounds ridiculous but I feel like SOMEONE has gotten even more flexible since last year"

If their 2023 Overwatch League Pro-Am victory didn't convince you, it's clear as crystal that the Florida Mayhem are one of the top teams playing today.

GGRecon spoke with Assistant Coach Caleb "McGravy" McGarvey about the Mayhem's final few matches of the Spring Stage qualifiers, how one of their brightest stars has grown, and why some wins sting more than some losses.

From landing a marquee main support to nabbing a hitscan DPS at their peak form, could you talk a little bit about how the offseason was from your perspective? Mayhem's General Manager Albert "yeHHH" Yeh used the term "power spike" to describe this year, do you feel like that fits? 

I think we knew going into the offseason that we were 100% going to be keeping the Ham "SOMEONE" Jeong-wan and Baek "Checkmate" Seung-hun duo because we had both of their +1 options and they were a force on Winston/Tracer and that's been a staple character duo for years. 

We also felt like Rupal had shown a ton of flexibility and potential for growth and was on a very team-friendly deal because we signed him mid-season last year. I think having that core of 3 really allowed us to be aggressive in the offseason and opt for a more unorthodox approach for me and Gunba by just outright signing veteran talent. 

We really valued our players' input and really pushed for that aggressive “power spike”. 

Ideally, we would have liked to keep a more even Western/Korean balance given we are an English-speaking coaching staff but I think the talent level of our team speaks for itself. Overall we feel pretty good about grabbing Choi "MER1T" Tae-min, Sung "CH0R0NG" Yoo-min, and Paavo "Sauna" Ulmanen given the amount of budget we have available to us.

Now that we're reaching the end of the Spring Stage, do you have any opinions regarding the scheduling of matches this year? Do you think Mayhem's strength of schedule helped or is it more of a hindrance? Any improvements you'd make to the format coming into the Summer Stage? 

It’s a very boring and fence-sitting answer from me but I don’t really bother myself with thinking on the balance of schedules in esports. 

Players and staff get moved in and out of teams so quickly that I can’t see a way to effectively balance a schedule that would satisfy everyone.

The one thing that I think would be beneficial is going back to having more tournaments so that even if the schedule is not balanced and fair, there are more opportunities for teams to qualify for events.

When we spoke last year you showered SOMEONE in quite a bit of praise. You mentioned how easy he was to work with and how you actually worked closely with him. What would you say SOMEONE has improved on the most? Is there an aspect of his game that you've seen really level up from his rookie debut? 

It sounds ridiculous but I feel like SOMEONE has gotten even more flexible since last year. 

There were times last year when we were hesitant to play him on D.Va for example and now we just don’t feel that way about him. We can confidently put him on any tank in the game and not even have to worry about him.

The biggest aspect of his game that I would say has improved is his situational awareness and staying calm in big moments. 

While he’s never been one to shy away from trying to clutch a big moment, I think he has been a victim of trying to do too much, too quickly. Even though our results in these close map fives haven't been ideal, he’s been a big reason we’ve been able to stay so calm and play well in these tough matches.

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If we roll back the tape a bit, Mayhem has been using Echo a fair amount. Could you walk through the thought process of that pick? Is it just more comfortable for Checkmate?

Well when we started experimenting with Echo, it was right around the time that Atlanta had Jedi mind tricked the entire Overwatch League into playing Sombra/Mei/Ramatraa rush comps.

We felt like that sort of composition wasn’t something we could replicate and get to the highest level with, so we were trying to find creative solutions to that problem.

I wouldn’t say it’s necessarily a comfort pick for Checkmate but it’s something we have the confidence in him to play and we wanted to experiment while we had the luxury to do so. 

One little oddity that we did want to get your insight on was that Week 3 nail-bitter against the Los Angeles Valiant. Why do you think that game was so close? Was that more of something that the Valiant did well or something you guys could have worked on? 

Frankly, that series was on me and Jordan "Gunba" Graham for not properly preparing the players for the match. We spent too much time looking past the Valiant that we didn’t really take the time to acknowledge that they have their strengths and the map pool for them in that series was very favourable.

Having the “better” talent does not guarantee you victory. Hats off to the Valiant players and staff for working so well with so little.

With the end of the Spring Stage in sight and the Midseason Madness on the horizon, what's this year been like so far? We talked a bit about what's changed for SOMEONE, but how have things been for you? Where do you feel like you've improved as a coach or even as a person? 

With our new and improved roster, I’ve been able to kind of accept that doing less is more for our roster in a lot of ways. 

I’ve been able to springboard off my relationships that I already have with Someone/Checkmate/Rupal and do a lot less one-on-one coaching and I can spend more of my time theory-crafting ideas to help us win maps/matches.

I think in a lot of ways our ideas/comps have pushed the meta forward to where we are at now even if it hasn't shown in matches all the time. Our macro and game understanding has been it’s best we’ve ever had in my opinion and I think that shows with our results.

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With a near miss against the Houston Outlaws and a resounding victory over the San Francisco Shock, things must be feeling good in Camp Mayhem. Any general takeaways from your final two Spring Stage qualifiers?

Heading into the Houston match we felt, as a staff, that if we were going to win it would have to be a clean 3-0 based off of the map pool and our current strength on the maps. 

Once we lost Hollywood we felt like the chance to win the series dropped drastically, even if New Queen Street and Nepal were both winnable maps in the match. 

The first four maps we felt like we had a better game plan and understanding of how to win and the Houston players were just able to adapt mid-match and our players didn’t make the same mid-map adjustments and it cost us, especially on New Queen Street when Houston broke out the Moira. 

For our Shock match, I think the biggest concern I had was our players playing down to their level. 

Shock are not a bad team, but given the strength of their players, they absolutely should be playing better. 

Unfortunately in the match, I think we took our foot off the gas for just about every map and made it competitive when I think we should have put them away a lot earlier. Any team that has Kim "Proper" Dong-hyun on it deserves some level of respect and we just didn’t show that to them and it cost us. 

Still got the win but there are standards and we failed to meet them. 

Overall I felt a lot better about the Houston series than I did about the Shock one.