NLTP NewsRoom Hub - DOW vs. LST (A)

Do the Wire was pretty well liked after the draft, with the aggregate power rankings putting them at #2, and the community ranking them #5. I put them at #2 as well because I didn't really see a weakness with this team.

LST was also loved by the community, being put above DTW as the #2 team. I wasn't really high on them, because I thought these players kind of stagnated at the A-Team level for a while, so I put them in at #8.

Will the perennial A-Team in LST do well against the community darling in DTW? Let's see!

I didn't expect this result, but kudos to LST for sweeping DTW, quite convincingly I might add. Limiting DTW to just six caps in 40 minutes is no easy task, but LST were up to the task. Getting a 15-8 TP lead probably helped with that.

On offense, you see drewfa leading the pack with and 81 ONISH, six caps, and 367 hold, which is a solid A-Team debut for the TPM lad. After that, the other three offenders in this matchup were a little meh, with all three having ONISHs less than 55. Scrub and OD combined for just five caps and 806 seconds of hold, while bbb had 390 hold and three caps. drewfa managed to get more caps than both DTW offenders combined, which is wild.

For defense, the biggest winner here has to be anduin, who had a 65 DNISH, but had the 98 TNISH and 90 ONISH. anduin got 522 prevent, 37 returns, and then had seven caps and 212 hold to go along with that. Just like drewfa, anduin outcapped both DTW offenders, but he took it a level further and outcapped the entire DTW team. El Sacko and Porps did get decent DNISHs, with El Sacko getting the 85 DNISH and Porps getting the 79 DNISH. They also combined for 1241 prevent and 84 returns, while the LST defense combined for 1023 prevent and 78 returns.

I think the biggest discrepancy we can see here between the teams has to be the Score%, and the Spark%. DTW's score rate was just 3.75%, while LST got a 12.25% score rate. That's more than triple DTW's score rate, which is insane. This of course leads to the spark rate, which has DTW at 20.83% and LST at 72.03%, which means that out of DTW's six caps, only one of them came from a self-produced grab. Now is that bad or good, that depends on how the other five caps came along, because DTW's Chain% was 85.06%, so at least they're getting good handoffs, but since they came dead last in grabs this week, that only amounted to 28 good handoffs, which is still kind of low. DTW did dominate in H/G, but when you're holding for that long and not capping, then that's an issue, so that great stat is misleading in a way, and the same issue persists with DTW's 19 long holds.

On defense, DTW had better stats, leading LST in returns, tags, and prevent, but it didn't really matter in the end. DTW also lost pups by 10, and had 10 less NRTs and seven less NDPs. They were tied for dead last in the league for key returns, with 2, while their RIB% was average and their QR% was below average. The LST defense didn't really do better or worse than the DTW defense, which is why the DNISHs are lower for anduin and Catalyst, but as we established, tripling a team's Score% kind of glosses over the mediocre defense. I really have nothing more to say to be honest, but I'm also really tired so maybe I should just take a break from writing these.

CONCLUSION

LST and DTW had similar defensive performances from what I saw from the stats and from also watching their games for a bit. It was the offensive side of the tiles that really made a difference, with 11 more good handoffs, 22 more grabs, and triple the Score% for LST's team. DTW just needs to work on capping more, which seems like a disingenuous piece of advice, but that seems to be the main issue they had. They just couldn't get the caps, and caps win games. Kudos to LST for capitalizing on their capping opportunities when they came up, and congrats on the sweep.