Cover-Credits:
North American organization NRG announced that it has moved four of its Valorant players from the active roster ahead of the Valorant Champions Tour (VCT) 2023 season. NRG was revealed as one of the ten teams that got into the Americas circuit in the Valorant franchising by Riot Games. Ever since the off-season kicked off, teams have been making moves to acquire the best players for their rosters and have been placing their old players on restricted and unrestricted free agencies. NRG is also seemingly making roster moves ahead of the revamped VCT season next year.
NRG reveals Valorant roster changes
On 1st October, General Manager and Chief of Staff of NRG Jaime Cohenca revealed the roster moves on Twitter. He wrote, “NRG VAL Roster Update: As we explore every option for our 2023 VCT roster, NRG has decided to move @ethanarnold [Ethan], @hazedcs [hazed], and @777eeiu [eeiu] off of the starting roster as restricted F/A's. @texerino [tex] will become an unrestricted F/A with his contract expiring.”
The players who were moved off the starting roster are:
James “hazed” Cobb - Restricted free agent
Ian “tex” Botsch - Unrestricted free agent
Daniel “eeiu” Vucenovic - Restricted free agent
Ethan “Ethan” Arnold - Restricted free agent
NRG’s Valorant coach Josh "JoshRT" Lee also noted that the organization has let him explore other opportunities with his contract ending at the end of the year. He is also an unrestricted free agent currently. The only member from the starting roster who has not been let go is Sam “s0m” Oh.
Ethan talked about NRG’s roster changes on his stream recently. He said, “Sam is still on the team but literally everyone else kind of just got forced out. No one really like left and there’s no bad blood or anything. It was just like ‘Hey, you guys are gone. See ya’ kind of thing.” Ethan added that from a competitive standpoint he wished he stayed with 100 Thieves.
Notably, Dot Esports’ George Geddes reported that NRG was set to sign four members of the OpTic Gaming Valorant team. According to Dot, NRG is finalizing the deal with in-game leader Pujan “FNS” Mehta, Austin “crashies” Roberts, Victor “Victor” Wong and coach Chet Singh.
Given the fact that NRG has moved four of its players away from the active roster with only s0m still in it, and with three OpTic players possibly joining the team, it would be interesting to see which player NRG opts for as its fifth man.
All three circuits in the new Valorant esports ecosystem – Americas, Europe, Middle East and Africa [EMEA], and Asia – will be participating in a three-week inaugural tournament in São Paulo, Brazil. All 30 franchised teams will compete in the tournament between February and March.
