Major 2 for the Call of Duty League has now officially come and gone with Atlanta Faze being the lucky winner, completing an impressive three-peat of LAN events starting with the Esports World Cup last year.
This impressive weekend tournament was not without its share of upsets within the bracket as well. For example, until Championship Sunday, every match was essentially a blowout with hardly a single map going to the opponent that lost. This set up some major implications for the looming “Rostermania” between Major, and who may get dropped or who may even get promoted to a more leadership-oriented role.
The biggest shock of the weekend, though, would be the tragic downfall of what was supposed to be a top four team in the Los Angeles Thieves. In between Major 1 and Major 2, they were dominant boasting a 7-0 record in the qualifiers with a game record of 21-2. With this, they established themselves as the #1 seed going into the weekend and would try to capitalize off their extreme momentum. However, when it came time to play on the main stage, they fell short. They would lose their first match in the winner’s bracket on Thursday against the Boston Breach with a match score of 3-1 and must resort to trying to make a loser’s bracket run. There was a glimmer of hope though because whilst in the loser’s bracket, they did make a deep run. They would get crucial wins against Miami, Carolina, and New York to get into Championship Sunday. They would go in with three dominant wins with only dropping a single map, but would also face a terrifying Toronto team who had not dropped a single map in the loser’s bracket. Well as the adage goes “What goes up, must come down,” and Thieves came down hard. They would lose 3-0 in a clean sweep against Toronto and got sent home with a 4th-place stamp.
Now we look forward to Major 3 and anticipate that many teams look to completely gut their roster and start a rebuild period going into the middle of the season with hopes of making it to Champs in stronger positions.
Current Standings:
1) Atlanta FaZe: 330 Points
2) LA Thieves: 270 Points
3) Toronto Ultra: 210 Points
4) Carolina Royal Ravens: 190 Points
5) Vancouver Surge: 185 Points
6) OpTic Texas: 110 Points
7) Boston Breach: 110 Points
8) Miami Heretics: 100 Points
9) Cloud9 New York: 95 Points
10) Minnesota Rokkr: 90 Points
11) LA Guerrillas M8: 30 Points
12) Vegas Falcons: 0 Points
