Is yay leaving C9 VALORANT? What we know and where the star player could go

Less than a week after the Cloud9 VALORANT roster were eliminated from the VCT LOCK//IN event, a rumored departure shook the North American and global landscape to its core. Reporter Max “purest” Katz reported that C9 would move forward without Jaccob “yay” Whiteaker, with a currently unknown replacement in his stead.

Even the idea of such a move seems unprecedented at first glance, and it honestly would be. The biggest offseason acquisition and star focus of a roster regarded as a superteam leaving after only seven series across essentially two preseason tournaments would be a staggering development.

But is he actually leaving? C9 as a brand has always leaned into trolling their audience, and have even done so recently with yay, after playing up that he had taken on the in-game leader role while at Red Bull Home Ground.

Is yay leaving the Cloud9 VALORANT roster?

Per an official report from George Geddes here on Dot Esports, Cloud9 and yay have officially agreed to part ways, and both parties will sign to terminate yay’s contract. The mutual release is not to due to performance issues, and yay will leave the organization.

C9 is expected to start trials at the beginning of March, and there does not appear to be additional roster moves incoming. One of the names listed to trial is Jimmy “Marved” Nguyen, the former OpTic Gaming player regarded as one of the best controller agent players in the world.

Where could yay go if he leaves Cloud9?

This is purely speculative, but here are a few potential landing spots for El Diablo.

NRG

A reunion with the OpTic core he found the most success with seems like the most likely scenario. Under the leadership of coach Chet and in-game leader FNS, yay established himself as one of the best players in the world, thriving thanks to the setups and strats he was made a part of.

But who makes room for him? Crashies, s0m, and FNS all seem pretty locked into their roles as primary initiator, controller, and in-game leader, respectively. Yay and ardiis play similar roles, so if you swap out Victor, one of them would have to pivot to more of a flex role instead of Jett main. Alternatively, yay could replace the man who replaced him, but it would be a bitter pill for NRG to swallow if they were to move on from ardiis so soon, though he could potentially fetch a nice offer from another team.

Evil Geniuses

Of the NA teams in VCT Americas that are not Cloud9 or NRG, it’s not unreasonable to speculate that EG might have the best odds of landing yay. 100T looks happy with the team they have, and even Sentinels probably can’t afford to pay both TenZ and yay.

There’s one spot left on the 10-man roster project that EG announced, and a yay pickup might be the most interesting way to fill out the group. EG has shown over the past year that they have a more-than-solid structure and talent development system in VALORANT, and they would have a huge collection of different pieces, including proven veterans and potential breakout stars that they could trial and experiment with putting around yay.

EMEA

Aside from ardiis moving to NA to join NRG, there was no player movement between EMEA and Americas during this offseason. Is it crazy to think that yay could replicate what Twistzz did in CS:GO, and move from NA to EMEA to find success with an international roster?

For this to happen, it would likely have to occur in the midst of the EMEA season, and probably be initiated by an English-speaking team that’s struggling and wants to inject some energy by bringing in yay off the C9 bench. It’s a specific scenario, but not an impossible one; what if a team with high expectations, like Liquid or Fnatic, starts out really slow? Or what if Giants or KOI need a spark?

With C9 and yay set to part ways, this opens up limitless possibilities for both parties.