Will Atlanta FaZe run away with Call of Duty League championship this year?

The first Call of Duty League Major of 2021 delivered its share of thrilling finishes, only to reach an anticlimactic conclusion — an inevitable Atlanta FaZe victory.

Through the first stage of the season, the 2020 runners-up have truly embodied the #EZAF hashtag that is often seen in their tweets. The only drama at the major, it seems, was seeing who would get mowed down by FaZe in the grand finals.

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Does the Call of Duty League have an Atlanta FaZe problem?

Top-seeded Atlanta marched through the tournament with ease, following back-to-back sweeps of the Los Angeles Guerrillas and Empire with a convincing 5-2 win over Dallas to close out Stage 1.

The Dallas Empire fended off a formidable challenge from OpTic Chicago, narrowly outlasting the Green Wall 3-2 for the right to meet FaZe in the winners bracket. After dropping to the losers bracket, they beat the surprising New York Subliners to get a rematch with Atlanta in the grand finals.

That FaZe won a major or are undefeated at 8-0 aren’t exactly shocking developments, with three of five members returning from last year’s squad.

The dominant manner in which they are cutting through opponents though is beginning to raise the question of whether they could run away with the CDL championship this year.

It might be early, but the numbers paint a grim picture for the rest of the league.

Read more: Call of Duty League Week 1: FaZe dominate, Thieves steal show

FaZe aren’t just winning — they’re winning big

Only twice so far has a FaZe match even appeared to be in doubt, going five games against OpTic on opening weekend, and again requiring a full set to dispatch of the Paris Legion during Super Week.

Otherwise, Atlanta has had its way with everybody, dropping just four maps total across their other six matches.

Their game winning percentage in all maps and modes is 76.5% — over 13 percentage points higher than the next-best record (Chicago, 62.9%), and 11 points above their CDL-leading 65.2% in 2020.

So FaZe aren’t merely the class of the league again. They’re improved and distancing themselves from the pack.

Putting the Destroy in S&D

It has been mentioned in this space before, but it cannot be stressed enough that Atlanta have looked almost unbeatable at Search & Destroy.

Sure, you don’t get to be undefeated at this point in the season if you’re not good at other modes, too, and FaZe are 9-4 at Hardpoint and 6-3 in Control. There are signs of an Achilles heel, with losing records at Checkmate (1-2) and Garrison (1-2) maps in Hardpoint, as well as a defeat in their only Control round at Checkpoint.

S&D is another story entirely. Atlanta is 11-1, going 69-32 (68.3%) in those rounds — essentially taking two for every one head-to-head encounter — and leading in every major statistical category by a wide margin with a 3.26 kills per round, 56.4% first blood rate and 1.3 K/D.

It feels as if FaZe are still playing with five men on the map sometimes. And aside from a sense of dread before lining up to face a veritable firing squad, that superiority is putting so much pressure on opponents, because if it’s an automatic 0-2 or at best a split in S&D, you pretty much need to play flawless the rest of the match.

MVP candidates Simp, Cellium and aBeZy all returned to an Atlanta FaZe squad that was a perennial winner last year too. Photo: Call of Duty League

MVP watch

Cliche as it might sound, FaZe truly don’t have a weak link right now. Quite the contrary, there are multiple candidates for MVP on this squad right now.

The frontrunner might be Chris “Simp” Lehr, who currently leads all of CDL with a 1.22 overall K/D. Simp is a huge reason for Atlanta’s success in S&D. His 1.65 K/D is light years ahead of the next best players at 1.37, but he also ranks second with a 1.24 K/D in Control and fifth with a 1.12 K/D in Hardpoint.

McArthur “Cellium” Jovel also cracks the top eight or higher in K/D categories across the board, certainly putting himself in the early MVP conversation as well.

We mustn’t forget about Tyler “aBeZy” Pharris, either, whose traditional ratios are good, if not necessarily in the upper echelon (tied for 13th with a 1.14 overall K/D). He’s another critical aspect of what’s making Atlanta’s S&D game so deadly though, leading the league with a 28.7% first blood rate.

Is there any slowing FaZe down?

There are ebbs and flows to any competitive season, so it would be a mistake to declare Atlanta unstoppable. The makeup of teams changes. Some get better. Others get worse.

Maybe a viable challenger emerges in the months ahead. Maybe FaZe runs into issues.

But as things stand today, Atlanta is the prohibitive favorite, and here’s why that might not change.

With the CDL’s move to a 4v4 format this season, players have generally said they feel gameplay is less chaotic, placing more of the emphasis on skill and strategy. In other words, while there will always be upsets, because after all, these are the best COD players in the world, the best players and teams have an opportunity to thrive more consistently.

Not only are several of the top CDL players with Atlanta, but the FaZe are looking like a complete team, with a game mode they absolutely own right now.

Looking at the sum of all the parts right now, I’d say the rest of the league has an Atlanta FaZe problem.

Lead image credit: Atlanta FaZe/Twitter