Even the season's bronze medal team is cleaning house.
Overwatch League rostermania has so far been filled with upper management swaps and retirement posts. But now, the seasons third-place team is surprisingly the first to make large-scale player drops.
The Houston Outlaws announced today that the organization is parting ways with supports Kim Creative Young-wan and Joseph “Lep” Cambriani, as well as tank Tomas “Doge” Kongsøre. This is the first multiple-player announcement of the 2022 offseason.
All three players were acquired in the latter half of the 2022 season. Houston acquired Lep and Doge in early August, hoping the Overwatch Contenders staples could fill in the missing pieces of its roster and cover any meta changes. Creative was acquired as a part of a trade deal that sent former Outlaws flex support Kim lr1s Seung-hyun to the Seoul Dynasty.
Unfortunately for the late-season signees, none of them saw much playing time aside from Creative, who stepped into the starting support lineup alongside Mun Lastro Jungwon. Doge and Lep both saw a minimal amount of stage time as the Outlaws fully committed to running veteran DPS player Dante Danteh Cruz in the tank role.
Creative and Lastro made for a dynamic duo when it mattered, however, properly supporting the teams DPS superstars in the playoffs.
Houston took third place in the Overwatch League postseason bracket, falling to the San Francisco Shock in the losers finals. That result, along with a 16-8 regular season record, made 2022 the most successful year in the teams history.