Most of the matches throughout Call of Duty League Major III have remained close in some way, but the same cannot be said for today’s match between Atlanta FaZe and the LA Thieves. Even with the momentum gained by defeating the number one seed Minnesota ROKKR, the Thieves fell completely flat against Atlanta. The match was a commanding 3-0 sweep for FaZe, who now advance to the winner’s final to face the Seattle Surge. LA, on the other hand, drops to the loser’s bracket; a place they’ve had little success this season.
LA flops against Atlanta FaZe
There was more hope for the Thieves coming into Major III than any other major tournaments this season. Los Angeles looked strong at the back end of the Major III qualifiers, even if they seemingly tried to avoid playing OpTic Texas in the winner’s bracket by trolling their way through a tiebreaker with Florida. After LA sneaked away with a win against Minnesota in round one of the winner’s bracket at Major III, confidence was high for the roster. That all came tumbling down when they got up on the main stage against the perennial titan that is FaZe.
Atlanta thoroughly dominated the first map, Hardpoint on Gavutu; typically a strong map for LA. McArthur “Cellium” Jovel continued his fantastic season, finishing the map with a 1.77 KD. He’s currently second among all CDL players in overall KD, sitting at 1.20. For the Thieves, the sub-machine gun players truly struggled, with Kenny Williams posting a .79 KD while Dylan “Envoy” Hannon ended with a .50 KD.
Things didn’t get better in the Search and Destroy on Bocage. Atlanta 6-0ed LA, only dying a combined 10 times throughout the entire match. Tyler “aBeZy” Pharris finished with the highest KD on FaZe (6.00) while both Zack “Drazah” Jordan and Sam “Octane” Larew finished with .17 KDs for LA.
He's one of the best in the game for a reason 😏@ATLFaZe look DOMINANT as they look to sweep the series 📺 https://t.co/wmB1gxuPFf@Cellium | #EZAF | #CDL2022 pic.twitter.com/anqCZSK5Gm
— Call of Duty League (@CODLeague) June 4, 2022
The Thieves looked to have something cooking in the Control on Gavutu round, but Atlanta took hold of the map, eventually winning 3-0 after a lengthy delay during rounds two and three. Combined, the Thieves didn’t win a single round in the S&D or Control and only managed 138 points in Hardpoint.
It’s surely a disappointing result for LA, who now has to face OpTic Texas in the loser’s bracket, the team they apparently tried to avoid in the qualifiers, as Atlanta moves on to Sunday to face Seattle in the winner’s final.
