Your cooldowns change what you are
A champion with Flash and a dash ready is a different champion from the same one with both down. The first can take a trade in the open, because a bad outcome has an exit. The second is a champion that has to win every trade it takes, because losing one has no exit. Players know this in principle and play both states the same way in practice.
The coach sees it because the recording shows the ability bar. It reads which of your spells were ready at the decision point, and the cooldowns tag goes on a death where the play would have been fine with the escape available and was fatal without it.
What it looks like in your footage
- Flash used in the last five minutes, and a trade taken in the open. Flash is the one cooldown everyone respects for the enemy and forgets for themselves. The footage shows Flash on cooldown at the decision frame and a step forward that only made sense with it.
- A dash spent to go in, with nothing left to go out. The player uses their mobility to start the fight, so the fight has to end well. When it does not, the frame where the damage starts is also the frame where the dash icon is grey.
- An ultimate that would have decided the fight, thirty seconds away. The player joins as if it were up. On a champion whose ultimate is the fight, joining without it is joining at a numbers disadvantage.
Why your own cooldowns are invisible
The ability bar is at the bottom of the screen, under the action, and the eye is on the champions. Enemy cooldowns are hard to track because they are hidden; your own are hard to track because they are boring. There is also a memory effect: a Flash used two minutes ago feels like a Flash used a long time ago, and 300 seconds is a long time to keep a count.
The one change
Naming the missing spell out loud sounds childish and works, because the words carry the fact into the decision. A player who has just said "no Flash" does not walk into the same trade as one who has not thought about it.
A drill for your next five games
Each time you use Flash, say the minute it will be back. It is roughly the current minute plus five. When that minute arrives, you will notice, and in between you will hold a different posture without trying to. After a few games, do the same for your main dash and your ultimate, and you will have the three cooldowns that decide most of your deaths in your head at all times.
How the coach catches it
Leaguio Coach reads the ability bar on the decision frame and tags cooldowns when the player committed to a fight or a trade with their escape or their deciding ability unavailable, and the fight went wrong in the way the missing spell would have prevented. The storyboard's readout under the frame lists what was ready. It is a different tag from greed, which is about a fight taken for too little, and from positioning in fight, which is about where the player stood once the fight was on.