In the first years of Rocket League esports, when studio broadcasts and world championships were still experiments, one of the most recognizable faces in North America belonged to a player in an orange shirt and a foam cowboy hat. Jacob “Jacob” McDowell was part entertainer and part playmaker, a forward who could look completely out of control on one touch and then uncork a perfect read on the next. From Kings of Urban to NRG Esports and later stints with Rogue and 72 Pin Connector, he helped define how early Rocket League looked, felt, and sounded on broadcast.
Across three full RLCS league seasons and dozens of online tournaments, Jacob’s teams repeatedly pushed to the top of North America. Kings of Urban reached the first RLCS World Championship in Los Angeles in 2016, while NRG became a three time North American regional champion during his tenure and a constant presence in international brackets. Public prize ledgers record him with roughly seventy thousand dollars in earnings, a modest figure by later standards but a substantial haul for the game’s early era.
Early Life, Screen Name, and First Lineups
Public records list Jacob McDowell as an American player born in 1997 who came into serious competition during the explosion of online events in late 2015 and early 2016. Under the in game name “Jacob,” he gravitated toward the aggressive, up front role that would define his career, playing in community tournaments and early weekly series before finding a permanent home on Kings of Urban.
Those early months of competition did not have the structure of the later RLCS system. Instead, Jacob and future teammates rotated through events like Rocket Royale, PPL, and independent invitationals, often with cash prizes in the hundreds of dollars. Match histories for his partner Kais “SadJunior” Zehri show the two of them teaming together in 2016 under tags like JACO and KING in these weeklies, finishing consistently near the top of North American brackets. These online runs formed the backbone of a reputation that would carry straight into the first official league.
Kings of Urban and the First RLCS Season
By the spring of 2016, Kings of Urban had emerged as one of the premier North American lineups. The team had roots that predated Jacob, but with him and Jayson “Fireburner” Nunez in the front line and SadJunior filling out the trio, Kings of Urban evolved into a fast, high pressure offense built around aggressive challenges and hard reads off the backboard. An ESPN feature on “Rocket League royalty” framed them as one of the region’s signature squads and highlighted Jacob as a high flying playmaker who fed off crowd energy, even when that crowd was a Twitch chat.
In the inaugural Rocket League Championship Series, Kings of Urban survived the North American qualifiers and group stages to claim a spot at the Season 1 World Championship, held on a stage in Los Angeles in August 2016. Tournament records list them among the eight teams at that LAN, with Jacob, Fireburner, and SadJunior placing seventh to eighth after a loss to The Flying Dutchmen in the lower bracket. The finish was disappointing on paper, but it locked Kings of Urban into the early history of the game and confirmed that Jacob belonged at the very top of North American play.
The loss also set the stage for the next phase of his career. As the RLCS format expanded and organizations took interest in Rocket League, Kings of Urban’s results across Season 1 made them a natural target for acquisition.
From Kings of Urban to NRG Esports
In the fall of 2016, NRG Esports entered Rocket League by signing the Kings of Urban roster, bringing Jacob, Fireburner, and SadJunior under an organization that already had a presence in other major titles. The move coincided with the second RLCS season, which shifted to a longer league structure in each region.
NRG immediately justified the investment. In RLCS Season 2, the team qualified for league play and then surged through the North American Regional Championship. Official Psyonix coverage of that event listed NRG as NA champions, with Jacob, Fireburner, and SadJunior taking first place and ten thousand dollars while securing the top North American seed for the Amsterdam World Championship. At the Season 2 Finals, they finished tied for fifth to sixth after losses to Precision Z and FlipSid3 Tactics in a stacked international bracket.
The disappointment in Amsterdam pushed NRG to make a roster change. According to Fireburner’s own later account, the team felt they had hit a ceiling and decided to replace SadJunior with Garrett “GarrettG” Gordon, a rising star from Orbit. The new trio of Jacob, Fireburner, and GarrettG became one of the defining lineups of early RLCS.
In Season 3, they turned league consistency into silverware. North American records show NRG topping the regular season standings and then winning the Season 3 NA Championship, once again taking the regional title and first seed to the World Championship. At the Los Angeles world finals that summer, NRG reached the semifinals and finished third, earning sixteen thousand dollars and falling only to eventual champions Northern Gaming.
Season 4 followed the same pattern with a cruel twist. NRG qualified for the Washington D.C. World Championship but finished ninth to tenth after a group stage collapse, an ending that led the organization to rebuild once again. Jacob, who had become one of the faces of both NRG and North American Rocket League, was released from the roster in early 2018. NRG’s farewell post on social media described him as a huge part of the team’s history and thanked him for his role in the organization’s rise.
Rogue, 72 Pin Connector, and the Long Tail of a Career
Leaving NRG did not mean leaving competition. Within weeks, Jacob surfaced on a new Equinox lineup and then joined Rogue ahead of RLCS Season 5. Tournament pages for that season record him alongside Matt “Matt” Dixon and Emil “Sizz” Abrahamsson as Rogue’s core, a trio that reached the North American league but could not replicate NRG’s title winning form.
In the years that followed, Jacob’s teams became smaller but his presence remained familiar. A detailed career summary from 2021 notes stints with 72 Pin Connector from 2020 into mid 2021 and a final run with Flashes of Brilliance through April 2022, mostly in regional events and RLCS X qualifiers. The prize money for these later seasons was a fraction of what would come in the modern era, but the results padded out a portfolio that already stretched back to pre RLCS tournaments.
By the time NRG finally lifted a Rocket League World Championship trophy in 2019 and again in 2025, Jacob was no longer on the roster. Yet his years in black and purple formed a bridge between Kings of Urban and the championship era, and they helped establish NRG as one of the most successful organizations in Rocket League history.
Foam Hat, Player Spotlight, and Streaming Persona
If Jacob’s tournament record explains why he mattered competitively, his personality explains why he stayed memorable. On stage he wore a bright yellow foam cowboy hat that matched an in game topper, turning him into an instantly recognizable figure whenever the camera cut to NRG’s booth. Fan compilations and RLCS clips often singled out the foam hat, and one official Twitch highlight simply titled “Jacob and his foam hat” preserved the moment where he put it on during a broadcast segment.
Psyonix leaned into that public image. An official “Player Spotlight: Jacob” video produced during the early RLCS years framed him as a creative, high flying forward, intercutting his own comments with highlights of impossible looking reads and double touches. Articles from outlets like ESPN and Red Bull similarly emphasized his willingness to embrace chaos, describing him as a player whose unorthodox positioning could either crack a defense or leave viewers wondering what he was thinking until the ball dropped perfectly onto a teammate’s car.
That mix of skill and showmanship transferred easily into streaming. On his Twitch channel, Jacob presents himself as a former Rocket League pro who rocked the foam hat and now plays for fun, a tone that matches the stream highlight reels and community clips that circulate under his name. Fans still reference moments like the “shirtless cob” meme clip and offbeat plays from his NRG days as shorthand for the goofy side of competitive Rocket League.
Legacy and Place in Esports History
Measured purely by trophies, Jacob’s career sits in the first great wave of Rocket League success. He was part of Kings of Urban’s run to the inaugural World Championship, twice won North American RLCS regional titles with NRG, and finished third at the Season 3 World Championship, all at a time when the game was still proving that it could support a professional scene.
Measured by memory, his impact is larger than his medal count. He helped define the Kings of Urban identity that NRG would inherit, served as one of the first true stars of the organization’s Rocket League division, and gave viewers a set of images that still resurface whenever fans talk about the early league era: the orange Kings shirt, the NRG jersey, and the foam hat perched above a wide grin.
In the broader context of Esports Legacy Profiles, Jacob represents a specific archetype. He is the regional great who thrived before the era of massive salaries and million dollar circuits, the player who helped build a scene that would later outgrow him. His playstyle, teams, and persona link the grassroots feel of 2015 Rocket League to the polished stadium finals of the modern RLCS. In that sense, Jacob’s legacy is not only written in results, but in the way a foam hat and a chaotic dunk came to stand for an entire moment in Rocket League history.