TL Spookz: "This split is all about proving ourselves"

The second week of competition of the League of Legends Championship Series (LCS) is history, and two teams remain undefeated. sit tied atop the 2026 Spring Split standings after a commanding 2-0 victory against . TL look to be past the letdown of missing international competitions during the Lock-In Tournament and are poised to establish the tone early in the split.

Sheep Esports talked with Assistant Coach Samuel “Spookz” Broadley following their second series victory of the split. The Australian shared about ’s current form, ’s meetings to improve mid-jungle synergy, and a change in patience within North America.

Samuel “Spookz” Broadley: “Honestly, staff and players have been working super hard because the result of Split 1 was not acceptable for us. Going into the offseason, we reviewed our stage games to try to figure out what was happening. As everyone knows, we couldn’t translate scrims to stage, and we concluded that we’re playing too safely and slowly compared to scrims. I know that’s somewhat vague, but we had Haitham (Haitham Algbory), our analyst, run a lot of data on what was happening on scrims and stage games. We were figuring out a playstyle that made us happy, and that we could translate from scrims to the stage. Watching high-tempo, aggressive teams at First Stand, like BLG, helped us get some direction on the style we want to develop. We’re not copying, but we developed our own version that works best for us. That’s been the direction that we’ve put a lot of time and energy into during the offseason.

Spookz: A big focus on our offseason was mid-jungle-support connection. Most of it is too hard to break down simply because it’s specific to each game and champion. A big focus is on how we communicate as a trio, how we allocate resources to mid or to ), and on making sure ) and Josedeodo are always connected. We must make sure we’re funneling these resources into each other's lanes. In simple terms, that’s what the focus has been, and you can probably see the results. The second game was slightly messy, but because our mid, jungle, and support are more connected, our game is smoother when we get an advantage. We looked at most of our games from Lock-In, particularly against , and made sure we brought in those three players together. We talked about how we wanted to communicate, how to play around the map, when to skip camps, and how to allocate our resources. These have been our conversations.

Spookz: I think LYON have their own style brought by ) to whatever team he is on. We’re all familiar with it, but LYON’s style punishes you when making a mistake. If we’re not connected and pressuring together, they’re super punishing. They can make you feel like you’re being strangled with the way they control side waves. The way I would describe LYON is that they’re very focused on being very efficient on the map and taking all the resources possible. If you’re not doing the right thing or make mistakes, it’s very punishing. I think is way more standard. It’s like a slow timer into an objective fight, and it’s predictable what they’re going to do in the game by focusing on team fights. Both are solid teams, and we don’t want to discredit C9 at all, but we think LYON might be a harder challenge for us. We haven’t had the opportunity to play C9 in a best-of-five series yet, so we have more data on LYON.

Spookz: When the split is short, it feels like you have to apply a Band-Aid on your problems. These band aids come from drafting and that kind of thing. For Lock-In, we had no time as ) arrived the week the tournament started. This situation raised two questions: do we focus on improving slowly as a team, or do we want results now? If we wanted results, we couldn’t look at long-term fixes and had to focus on an easy fix. This split, it felt nice having Morgan for the whole preseason. We were able to set and work on the goals before the season even started, and when an issue manifested, it felt like it could be fully resolved. Timing-wise, it has felt much smoother for us.

Spookz: From a competitive standpoint, it feels better to have more time to work on your problems. I don’t know the numbers, but shorter splits and more international events make it more exciting and more of a viewing spectacle. The fans keep competitive League of Legends running, whatever they want, we have to make it work, and we’re happy to do it. For the health of esports, if that’s the direction that’s needed, it is what it is. For a competitive perspective, it feels much nicer [to have time to prepare]. Especially when you’re a new team, Team Liquid needed more time to come together. It is not ideal for us, but it is what it is.

Spookz: I believe that teams are learning the value of holding rosters together. If you look at teams like

G2 Esports

holistically, they’ve made more roster changes, but they’ve made one change in a span of three to four years. Teams are realizing that building relationships and synergy is important for the team’s consistency, assuming things run smoothly. People are not looking for short-term fixes, as they understand the downside of having that approach, which NA has had for a long time. Teams like and G2 kept their same core roster for two years, and you can see they’ve been improving together. Even if [FlyQuest] came apart at the end, you can see the value of holding teams together.

Spookz: We had complete control of the game, and our lanes were going extremely well. We’re still a team that plays loose with an advantage, and we’re working on that. We made some crucial mistakes against the strong scaling enemy comp. If we messed up, the game could turn hard, as you could see, especially in that Herald fight. We engaged when Xayah got ulted out and then ran one-by-one-by-one. Not being calm, understanding the moment, and feeling the pressure are silly mistakes I don’t think we’re making in scrims. In that sense, it was slightly cringe, but we’re still working on that kind of stuff. We need to clean it up a bit.

Spookz: In Split 1, we came together later than we wanted to. Even though we should have done better, the conditions weren’t there for us to improve our performance as a team, but we have no excuses for this split. I genuinely believe we are the best team. If, for whatever reason, we don’t get to show that, it’s a complete failure on us. This split is all about proving ourselves. I know we have the narrative of being the scrim kings, but scrims don’t matter in the end if you can’t perform on stage. We must overcome this hurdle and show what we believe in ourselves.

Spookz: I think right now, Josedeodo. He is genuinely smurfing. He made a couple of mistakes on the Jarvan game, but he is one of the main pillars of our team right now. His mechanics and decisions influence how we play as a team. For sure, I would have to pick Josedeodo.

Spookz: He improved a lot, as he put even more work in. The general direction and what we’ve worked on as a team is to help him play the way he wants to. It’s a team effort, combined with his own effort applied during scrims and the offseason.”