Esports Arena and NRG dominate 2nd week of Pro League

NRG and Esports Arena dominated the 2nd week of Pro League. Both teams secured victories in their respective lobbies. This 2nd gameweek took place over Thursday and Friday, in a bumper schedule due to the suspension for Ukraine. Gameweek 3 takes place today (Saturday) and Sunday.

Esports Arena have already opened up a respectable lead in the overall standings, and could earn direct entry to the ALGS Championship if they can maintain their top 5 finish.

There was significant pressure on Esports Arena after their record breaking points total last weekend. While Friday's performance was not quite up to the same standard, they stand at an impressive 6 wins out of 12 matches played in the Pro League so far.

Unlike last weekends action, Esports Arena did not have a clear landing spot on Storm Point. They were contested by Pro League defending champions, Sentinels.

Knoqd, their most recent arrival, is unstoppable in off drop fights. He potentially has the best record in 50-50's in North America. He has successfully seen off CLG and Complexity at West Frag, and now Sentinels at Mill.

While Esports Arena did not perform quite as well on Storm Point as last weekend, which is standard for contested teams, they still put down key points. The highlight being a 10 kill win in Game 2.

The question for Sentinels is now, stick or twist? They finished a very poor 16th. ESA and Sentinels will both be expecting to make LAN at the end of the split. Will Sentinels risk missing out because they contested Esports Arena in 2 of their 6 game weeks? Would they even contest them at LAN? They are yet to really put down any form of dominance over Esports Arena in any tournaments featuring Storm Point.

NRG put a below-par opening gameweek behind them with a return to top form. The trio of Sweetdreams, Rocker and Nafen put down two mind blowing games to beat TSM to first place.

What was especially encouraging for NRG was that their two wins were on the two different maps. NRG had been struggling with Storm Point and have been steadily improving. With teams like Esports Arena setting such a high bar, the pressure was on for NRG to close the gap.

Sweetdreams told Tsquared in the post match interview that their big improvement from the opening gameweek simply came down to the NRG roster playing the game. Sweet had said on stream that the trio had just 70hrs in the last 2 weeks combined gametime. Elden Ring had been keeping the attention of Sweet and Nafen in particular.

When asked about his in game leadership, Sweet said "The best advice I can give is the triple C's. Cool, Calm and Concise."

It was certainly absolutely vintage Sweetdreams in Game 3, leading his team to a massive 31 points in a single game while also dropping over 3k damage himself. Many people cannot even do that much damage in their casual gameplay.

NRG will now be focused on maintaining their high level this coming weekend.

The top 5:

Full standings on Liquipedia.

There is more action tonight as the bumper schedule really starts to take hold. 10 of tonight's competing 20 teams will not have had even a single day of practice to improve, refine or rework their strategies. Before the suspension, matches were only scheduled at weekends, leaving a whole week to work on your gameplay between gameweeks.

Can Esports Arena maintain their momentum for another week and put down 3 wins in a row?

Stay tuned to esports.gg for the latest Apex Legends news and full coverage of the ALGS Pro League.