FaZe Clan and Shane “Rawkus” Flaherty have parted ways as he now heads to Sentinels as their new VALORANT head coach. Sentinels rampaged through their VALORANT Champions Tour (VCT) campaign this year without an official head coach, so fans will be excited to see what kind of an impact Rawkus can have on the team. Sentinels will be headed to compete on the global stage, representing North America at VCT Champions Berlin.
The team dropped the coaching announcement on Twitter on Monday, saying “Adding brainpower to our firepower. We're ready for Berlin. Let's get to work.”
Prior to Rawkus' arrival from FaZe Clan, Sentinels had been competing through the entire VCT stages without any coach, strategic or otherwise. Instead, they relied on the leadership of in-game shotcaller Shahzeb “ShahZaM” Khan, and simply prepared for matches the way they knew and believed to be best.
This setup did appear to work for them extremely well. Although the VALORANT pro scene has not been around for too long (this is the first year of VCT), Sentinels have already made their mark, absolutely tearing through NA.
Back in the first stage of VCT, Sentinels and FaZe Clan went head to head thrice—including the grand finals round of Masters One in NA—and Sentinels came out on top every time. The team didn't even drop a map to FaZe. They went on through the next stage of VCT, capping off an unbeaten Masters Reykjavik campaign to secure a spot at Champions.
On the contrary, FaZe has experienced a tumultuous season. Rawkus had played as a Sova main for them, though previously he was also a pro player for Overwatch League team Houston Outlaws. It will be interesting to see the dynamic of the Sentinels squad with Rawkus at the helm and how their strategies unfold going into Champions.