karrigan: “Now it’s back to the old FaZe Clan”

Finn ‘karrigan’ Andersen is widely regarded as one of the greatest and most versatile IGLs of all time, able to muster magic out of whatever pieces he is provided with. karrigan famously has won multiple events with stand-ins, most notably IEM Katowice 2022, where Justin ‘jks’ Savage stood in for multiple roles on FaZe’s way to Katowice glory.

Yet in 2025, FaZe and karrigan could not find the solutions within the game to make Jonathan ‘EliGE’ Jablonowski fit in a FaZe Clan that philosophically clashed with the methodical and structured style that EliGE brought with him.

Now in BLAST Open London, victories over Ecstatic and NaVi, combined with a classic FaZe series against Vitality, have given FaZe a much more familiar feel. Esports News UK sat down with karrigan to discuss their 2025 struggles, jcobbb’s benefits to the roster, and finding FaZe again.

“The most important thing was that we didn’t have a strong mentality”
karrigan on the first season of 2025

For Faze, it’s been a kind of an uncharacteristic year, the kind of year where a lot of the time it felt like you’d lost what Faze was about. Coming into this event, it feels much more familiar. How do you feel about the event so far?

Yeah, we played three games online. We won a 13-0, we had an overtime against Ecstatic, we had a pretty clean game against NaVi, and then we had very exciting games against Vitality.

When you think about those three games, I think that represents what we are in FaZe Clan and the DNA we have played with, where we don’t always win clean. We can win clean, but we can also make it exciting and throw some games and rounds.

In my opinion, it feels like we’re kind of like back in the right direction and hopefully we can continue that.

“He has the aim and the explosion of a Twistzz, but he has the soldier mentality of a rain”
karrigan on jcobbb

In the first half of the season, I think just before Austin, you mentioned that you “tried everything” in the first half of the year, and it wasn’t working. Can you just detail what that means inside and outside of the server for the roster?

I’ve been part of many rosters and roster moves and cores of different teams, and the most important thing in a core team is it has to feel natural.

When the game comes, there’s always a certain scenario you never had before, and you kind of have to react to it in a decent way as a team and understand the situation, and this was very hard with the previous lineup with EliGE.

We could never really find the same page where the game goes, or a strong map. We found that in the end, but building a map pool is an IGL, understanding what philosophy we play.

When I say we tried everything, we basically changed a little bit of our philosophy in how we play, how we start rounds, how we end rounds, something that’s not natural. For me, changing positions, ‘trying everything’ inside the server, means you turned all stones.

You only do that when you don’t feel comfortable or people don’t feel they’re comfortable in a team. You don’t do it based on results, but you are trying to look at different results.

The most important thing was that we didn’t have a strong mentality. That comes from not believing in our system, believing in ourselves, believing in the way we play. How can you believe in the comeback if it’s a system that has cracks, right?

We tried again at the beginning of the season to see what we could do. Could we stick with something? We still had some of the same issues, and I think for me, the biggest point was that we were not strong mentally.

At some point, you have to look at the lineup or the call or the way we play. There’s always an expiration date on a lineup or the way you play.

“We are opening more doors for everyone in the team where we tried to set up EliGE a lot for success, and he was really good, but we could not win rounds on certain scenarios we created.”
karrigan on the previous roster

A lot of the sentiment I’m seeing around jcobbb is that jcobbb can be like your soldier. You’ll say ‘jump,’ and he’ll say ‘how high?’ Do you think that’s the kind of accurate view of what kind of benefits he gives to the roster?

Yeah, for sure. Now he is more like a soldier, right? I think when I look at the players, when I have to think about previous players, he has the aim and the explosion of a Twistzz, but he has the soldier mentality of a rain.

I’ve never seen anyone like rain just going, swinging, even though he doesn’t think it’s right, but he does it for the team, like he swings to create space.

But now I’m also seeing, after some practice, that there are certain scenarios he’s super good at. That’s going out Hut on Nuke as a first guy, and I was like, ‘Should I put him second?’

I saw how he removed four from Vitality, and they’re not even blind, and they’re shooting pretty hard. So there are certain scenarios where I want to put him where he’s comfortable.

Right now, he doesn’t know what he’s comfortable with, right? So it’s a trial and error, but he’s very open-minded.

So, yes, it is a different way, and we’re also going to lose some voice with EliGE not playing in the team, but there’s other players who have to step up and take that voice like frozen, rain and broky. They can be more themselves or just speak freely about what they want to do in certain rounds, in certain scenarios.

So it feels like we are opening more doors for everyone in the team, where we tried to set up EliGE a lot for success, and he was really good, but we could not win rounds on certain scenarios we created.

And that sucks as a team. That’s very hard to change all the time.

Time for a new era.

Welcome to FaZe CS @1jcobbb 🤝 pic.twitter.com/q9xQ8LPkmB

— FaZe Esports (@FaZeEsports) August 22, 2025

You talked about jcobbb’s role there. The meta has kind of shifted in terms of how important your entry is in terms of actually having impact as the first guy in rather than just like being a space attacker. Do you see Jacob as that guy? Or do you see him kind of as more of a trading guy?

That’s the beauty. With jcobbb, I feel like I can send him in first, but I can also send jcobbb in and frozen as a trade. I could also send myself in first in some rounds, some tactics, and some duels where it’s very hard to get the kill.

It might be better to put jcobbb second, but if you really want on a map like Ancient where the entry straight up duels in mid, that’s more for jcobbb. So it opens the door of opportunities with Jacob not wanting exactly one thing or something.

So and we don’t know if Jacob is going to be an anchor. We don’t know if he’s going to be a star position on everything, so now we are testing it out.

I know I have rain and frozen really open. They have certain things they like to do, but they’re also open-minded to try something else. How we play and we can decide with different players.

So I’m just looking forward to seeing what he develops into, but one thing is clear. His aim is really sharp, and we’re going to try to utilise that the most and try to figure out what his strengths and what his weaknesses are, so we can work on those and make sure he’s always playing to his strengths.

“If I call A rush, he says ‘how fast?’”
karrigan on jcobbb

It’s interesting that you mentioned frozen as a player that could shift positions because frozen came into the team while ropz was still there, and frozen had been playing a lot of ropz’s positions in Mouz. But he’s kind of like more stuck to those positions with Faze after ropz left. Do you think getting more out of Frozen in the late round as a kind of lurking piece could be more on the cards for this iteration?

I think generally you can say frozen is our most passive player, but he still has very aggressive tendencies that we can use sometimes. I think his trading is one of the best in the world. So, when he goes in second, he can really clean up in case the first guy didn’t do his job.

So where are we going to end with that? I think for now, he’s the most passive player in the team. rain is that fluctuating, very interesting Joker. You can say what frozen was when ropz was there is now what rain is, but he has more aggressive tendencies.

So let’s give an example on those two. When we strafe Catwalk, we have me, jcobbb and rain – none of us are stopping.

It’s a full strafe and everybody wants to take the duel. So I think those are things I will figure out over time. But the thing about rain is he has performed so good lately. He’s now comfortable in his roles.

So how it’s going to look in two or three months is very hard to say. But I think we have found a really, really good starting point with jcobbb and the team.

He’s comfortable and he still has to learn in some positions, but the overall team is performing better, I would say to a more stable level, and that’s where it gets exciting when we can try to do that and become again FaZe Clan what we have been.

But things change, right? So we have to find our new style or new DNA, but I just want us to be very strong mentally and go in and give everything we have and just believe that if we all jump through the smoke at the same time, I think we have a chance to win no matter what.

“I have now gone back to what my gut feeling is. I just call off a gut feeling. If I see something, I don’t care if we lose the round. I’ll take responsibility.”
karrigan on calling this season

Before broky was benched in the roster, one of the things I noticed with how he was shooting was that it kind of felt like maybe he was looking at his radar, it didn’t feel as natural. In this event, it just feels like broky is playing by feel again and frozen has stepped up individually as well. Do you think like the addition of Jacob has kind of made the game just more natural for them?

I think so. There’s nothing bad against Jon [EliGE], right? I think Jon is a very good player and a very underrated player.

He does a lot for the team, but he’s very into the system. And I think what we have done over the past few years is controlled chaos, and that’s where broky and David [frozen] shines.

When they play a little bit faster as a pack, as a team, the opportunity arises for frozen to take the aggressive gap or play the late round.

broky is much more explosive now. You can say the way I’ve been calling is also different because for me, it was very important to make EliGE comfortable in certain starts of round, how we take in the defaults, where the defaults ends, and when I should take over.

Now, I might just call A rush. I don’t care. I think the most important thing that changed is also I have now gone back to what my gut feeling is. I just call off a gut feeling. If I see something, I don’t care if we lose the round. I’ll take responsibility.

But I think many times with my experience, I am kind of correct with what setup they have, and I think that has changed as well to open up and be more explosive as a team, which I think has always been our strength with me leading FaZe Clan and not the slow default where we try to figure out we can play those rounds. I think in the end, we kind of got too easy to read the whole season.

With the online games, I think we have found it’s harder to read, on the tactical aspect, our T-side.

Recharged, refreshed, and readier than ever. 💥 pic.twitter.com/xg7kyAwMAa

— FaZe Esports (@FaZeEsports) July 9, 2025

“I have never set any player up so much as I have done with EliGE”
karrigan on EliGE

So, just to kind of put everything together, what does the ideal FaZe game look like with this lineup?

Yeah, I think now I think we can play the slow defaults. We can set up jcobbb or rain, or myself to some entries. We can play the mid rounds very slow, figure that out, but we can also just call the A rush.

I think that is what is different, I think what you come back to with jcobbb if I call A rush, he says ‘how fast,’ you know? So that is just going. Nobody questioned. Let’s just go.

Sometimes you have to call something you don’t have in the playbook because if you have a full playbook, it’s going to be a lot of rounds to remember, but if you have variations and you can call the variations and people just understand approximately what to do, that’s where the freedom is.

Okay, ‘how fast are you going?’ ‘Are you going to show the peek next call?’ and stuff like that. That’s where the communication is way more fluent now in the way we play.

That’s just me saying, ‘let’s just try it until the end of the season,’ me calling very explosive and me controlling a lot, not thinking about how to set up players, but they have to set themselves up in the way I’m calling, and that’s how it used to be.

I have never set any player up so much lately as much as I have done with EliGE, for example. I was very curious to make him happy, to create a good system, good rounds for him, but now it’s back to the old FaZe Clan.

I don’t care about ropz having to rush. He has to do, he has to rush if that’s my call, you know?

So that’s just basically me leading way more strongly now and not taking too much input on how people want to play the game, but they have to follow my lead, and I’ll try to make them very good.