As the Call of Duty League has entered its first week of matches, let’s take a look at which teams seem to look the strongest.
The 2021 season began with changes that fundamentally changed the Call of Duty League’s competitive landscape. The shift from 5 man rosters to 4 on 4 competition reshuffled rosters across the board, most notably former CDL champion for the Dallas Empire, Clayster, being moved to the New York Subliners. New teams aiming at the crown also entered the scene, namely Nadeshot’s illustrious return to competitive Call of Duty through his new team, the Los Angeles Thieves.
In the first week, the prospective playoff teams largely ran away with games as Dallas Empire, Chicago Optic, Atlanta Faze, and LA Thieves all had statement 3-0 games. Though the weekend ended on some competitive games between big names, the favorites made it clear that they were coming into this year hot.
Dallas Empire inconsistent
In their first game against Seattle Surge, the reigning CDL champions looked back in title-winning form. Empire had one of the most dominant Hardpoint showings on Crossroads, winning 250 to 98 with every player averaging over 1:00 on the objective. Shotzzy had a masterful performance in the second game on Search and Destroy, showing incredible game sense and gunplay. As he clutched out multiple rounds, it didn’t matter how the opposition played, Shotzzy was intent on taking the map.
Gotta win those… 😳 pic.twitter.com/1ReN1hdU6a
— Dallas Empire (@DallasEmpire) February 11, 2021
After a convincing win and impressive debut, Dallas Empire ended on a disappointing note as they dropped to Minnesota Rokker in a lengthy five game series. The team showed cracks in their play on SnD, Shotzzy playing completely reversing his play from game one but in the wrong direction as he averaging a 0.38 K/D while Rokker’s Attach and Priestahh showed up across all five games.
Up and down for Chicago OpTic
In their first game, the OpTic squad swept Paris Legion. Admittedly, this was an expected result as the Legion roster has widely been described as a ‘budget’ team during the offseason. The OpTic veterans, Scump and FormaL, had great performances, particularly in game 2 on Raid where Scump averaged a 1.06 K/D and had the highest time on the hardpoint.
Blink and you’ll miss it. pic.twitter.com/iKbXSvSmqo
— OpTic Chicago (@OpTicCHI) February 12, 2021
Search and Destroy proved to be a coinflip for the Chicago OpTic. Last year, SnD was OpTic’s worst game type by far as they averaged the second lowest round win rate at 48% and while Envoy and FormaL made great strides against the Paris Legion in improving their gameplay (seen below) they could not repeat this performance against Faze.
Atlanta Faze picked apart OpTic on SnD, intentionally picking the mode as the game 5 decider with full knowledge of their inconsistency. In game 2 on Miami, OpTic failed to pick up a single win while the game 5 they only managed to get one round. It’s very clear where OpTic needs to improve if they hope to contend for the championship, as teams will always take advantage of this weakness.
Atlanta Faze hasn’t slowed down
Faze’s squad came into this season looking to rekindle the incredible regular season performance from last year that granted them a 26-7 record. Against the LA Guerrillas, Faze kept a healthy lead across all three maps. Arcity’s was Faze’s MVP this series as he top fragged on nearly every map and dominated SnD on game 2 as he went on a 12 kill tear with the most bomb plants on the team as well.
O M G 🤯 A B E Z Y@aBeZy | #EZAF pic.twitter.com/gvOkfkvpTF
— #FaZeUp (@FaZeUpdate) February 15, 2021
On the other end of the most important match of the week against Chicago OpTic, Atlanta Faze took a major step to putting themselves at the top of the rankings once again. Faze proved their roster’s depth of talent, when the 3 out of 4 members of the team underperformed, Abezy stepped up.
LA Thieves scrape by
The newcomers to the CDL and a prospective dark horse if they can make it to the playoffs, the LA Thieves made a strong argument for themselves. Only dropping a single game the entire weekend, though winning every game against the Subliners were on a knife’s edge. TJHaly had a great showing in both games and put a spotlight on himself as a player to watch going forward, making countless montage-worthy plays.
The Thieves’ 2-0 record may be a bit misleading, as barely scraping by games will not be enough when they face off against more cohesive teams like Atlanta Faze, but thankfully they have plenty of time to clean up their play before then.
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