The big news out of Week 5 of the NA LCS is that Echo Fox now has a decisive hold on first place, and it’s going to be hard to shake them from it. Cloud9 was tied with Fox in the standings, but after this week’s loss, that will put Fox up one will and C9 down one loss.

Much of League of Legends comes down to pressure, and C9 was feeling it a little too much on Sunday. C9 out-drafted Fox, and Licorice was destroying Huni in lane, but whether it was his own inexperience in the top lane or Svenskeren’s failure to protect or counter-gank, Licorice was quickly abused and destroyed, making him essentially useless the entire game. It didn’t help that C9 continued to make missteps, whether it was Smoothie using Alistar’s headbutt on Altec while alone in lane (and dying for it) or C9 sending two people into Fox the moment after Fox just took two kills. This doesn’t mean C9 can’t still take first, but it will mostly be relying on someone else to take out Fox.

Last week, we said to watch Golden Guardians vs Team Liquid, and it did not disappoint. At 10 minutes, the teams were even with no kills. At 17 minutes, they were even in gold with the Guardians up 1 kill and TL up 1 turret. Despite some over-aggressive plays, Contractz and Lourlo were the heroes of this game, with Contractz single-handedly ending Doublelift several times with Skarner ulties (and forcing 3 members of TL to get QSS). Lourlo, meanwhile, was just doing beastly things, and it was his TP pincer attack onto a losing team fight that won the Guardians this game. Just a reminder, the Guardians are in last place, and they just beat the 3rd place team. Time to get hyped.

This week also saw our veterans take more of a bruising than before. CLG and TSM were both handily trounced this week, with two more losses being handed to them each. The biggest embarrassment for TSM was in their match against Clutch Gaming. Bjergsen lost lane to Febiven – which surely doesn’t help with confidence. Meanwhile, MikeYeung was caught out time and again and killed and made entirely irrelevant. When the Nexus fell, Clutch had 10 kills. TSM had 1. Ouch.

Meanwhile, CLG’s games were a mess. CLG against TL were two teams too afraid to fight (25 minutes with no deaths? League of Yawns), and both teams played sloppily and uneven. Their match against 100Thieves, on the other hand, was much closer to the League of Legends of old. The two teams hurled themselves at one another in fight after fight, completely ignoring minions pushing into each other’s bases as they battled it out in mid land. 100T took the win, and it was pretty much entirely because of Aphromoo, who played like a Bard God.

Lastly, Clutch might finally be breaking from the pack. Febiven looked outstanding this week, and some coordinated fights and rotations put Clutch resoundingly ahead in objectives and pressure against FlyQuest and TSM. They still make some sloppy plays – Solo isn’t quite where he needs to be yet – but they are certainly looking better than TL, who have been falling apart ever since Week 3.