Two years after he retired, the two-time Masters champion would move from T1’s content team into its VCT Pacific lineup, with another American beside him.
Tyson “TenZ” Ngo is set to return to professional VALORANT with T1 for the 2027 VCT season, Sheep Esports reports. According to the same outlet, Austin “crashies” Roberts is also set to join T1 after two seasons at Fnatic. Neither T1, TenZ nor crashies has confirmed the moves.
Sheep’s sources say the 25-year-old Canadian “is therefore expected to return to the server and competition in 2027”. He has been with the South Korean organisation since May, but as an influencer and content creator rather than a player.
From retirement to “LFT”
TenZ announced his retirement from competitive play on 14 September 2024, after Sentinels finished fourth at VALORANT Champions Seoul, and moved into content creation for the organisation. It ended a VALORANT career that began at Cloud9 in 2020 and brought two Masters titles with Sentinels, in Reykjavรญk in 2021 and Madrid in 2024.
He has hardly played official matches since. In May 2025 he stood in for Cubert Academy, Sentinels’ academy side, in the North American Challengers playoffs. A year later, on 10 May 2026, T1 announced him as an influencer.
On 21 October he told his followers on X that he was looking for a team. The post has since passed 6 million views.
TenZ has not posted on X since. T1’s only VALORANT announcement since the reports came out was on Wednesday morning, when it welcomed back coach So “sungmin” Seong-min, who will lead the roster “alongside our new Head Coach”. T1 did not name that head coach. Sheep reported on Tuesday that Gustavo “Sacy” Rossi, TenZ’s former Sentinels teammate, is set to take the job.
Three left, two coming
T1 parted ways with Meteor, Munchkin and DH and both coaches on 2 November, after a season that ended with fifth to sixth place at Champions Shanghai. Only three players are left from the 2026 team, and iZu is the only one with a contract that runs through 2027. Sheep writes that T1 want to keep stax and BuZz and are still in talks with both.
| Player | Status |
|---|---|
 TenZ | Set to join, per Sheep Esports |
 crashies | Set to join, per Sheep Esports |
 iZu | Under contract through 2027 |
| stax | In talks over a new deal, per Sheep Esports |
| BuZz | In talks over a new deal, per Sheep Esports |
With TenZ in place and talks still going with the players who are left, crashies “could be the final piece of the roster”, Sheep writes. It would be the first time T1 field non-Korean players since they became a VCT Pacific partner in 2023. Sheep adds that the organisation must keep at least three South Korean players to stay based in Korea, and that TenZ’s “expected arrival also raises questions about the team’s language”.
crashies goes back to where he started
For crashies it would be a return. The 28-year-old American played for T1 from May to September 2020, in the months after the game’s launch, before moving to ENVY. He reached the Masters Berlin final with them in 2021, then won Masters Reykjavรญk 2022 with OpTic Gaming and lost the Champions 2022 grand final.
After two years at NRG he joined Fnatic in December 2024. His first season there brought the VCT EMEA Stage 1 title, second place at Masters Toronto and the Esports World Cup, and a second Champions grand final. 2026 was much worse. Fnatic finished fourth at EMEA Kickoff and fifth to sixth in Stage 1, then went out in the Stage 2 group stage and missed Champions.
The deal may have been in the making for a while. Fans told Sheep they had seen T1 CEO Joe Marsh with crashies at T1’s Worlds pop-up in Dallas.
