Step 1: Dominate group stage. Get their fans and analysts hyped because they bring out cool set plays and executes. The teams in groups aren't good enough to exploit their mid-late rounding.
Step 2: Play a decent team close. Their issues are getting somewhat exploited, but the teams aren't good enough yet to fully break open that hole. Fans continue to get overly hyped.
Step 3: Play a good team and lose. Their issues are being seen clearly and played around by better teams. Teams begin to anti-strat them. This game still may be close because DRX is riding their momentum from previous matches. Fans still overly hopeful.
Step 4: Choke. The players are still hung up on their last game and aren't mentally there. EX. Rb said he didn't want to awp against Zeta in M1 because he was feeling bad from OpTic game. The entire team underperformed individually against FPX in the lowers of M2. Issues are apparent to the casual viewer and they are being fully anti-stratted. Fans think that they will fix these issues in the next event but... (see step 5)
Step 5: Repeat