While discussing the upcoming 2021 Call of Duty League campaign with Hector ‘H3CZ’ Rodriguez on his Eavesdrop Podcast, New York Subliners veteran Thomas ‘ZooMaa’ Paparatto revealed his top three teams to watch out for during the Black Ops Cold War season.
The CDL offseason was full of big moves, like the LA Thieves replacing OpTic Los Angeles and the transition of the Chicago Hunstmen to OpTic Chicago. With many players switching to new teams, fans and competitors were left wondering how the league’s rankings will look as the season kicks off.
While the official CDL schedule hasn’t been announced, league play is anticipated to start in early 2021. Prior to the start of the season, pro player ZooMaa sat down with OpTic owner H3CZ and revealed the three teams he thinks fans and players should watch out for coming into 2021.
After discussing topics like Gentlemen’s Agreements and the map design in Black Ops Cold War, H3CZ shifted the conversation towards the CDL season: “Who’s your main competition, you think, right now? Give me your top three teams.”
The pro pondered the question for a second, then responded with Atlanta FaZe, Dallas Empire, and Chicago OpTic. ZooMaa’s rankings are similar to many others leading up to the 2021 season, and for good reason: Dallas, Atlanta, and Chicago finished first, second, and third in the 2020 CDL playoffs, respectively.
While Empire didn’t make any major offseason moves aside from dropping Clayster to fit the new 4v4 format, both FaZe and OpTic made some roster shuffles. FaZe replaced MajorManiak and Priestahh with former Huntsmen player Arcitys, whose departure from Chicago left a void that was filled with Dashy to bolster their roster.
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H3Cz took a deeper dive into the reasons behind ZooMaa’s rankings, asking the longtime vet whether or not the offseason moves had anything to do with the teams’ projected success in 2021.
“There’s a lot of good players, but you gotta find the right group” ZooMaa answered. “So I think you guys [OpTic] found the right group. And I think FaZe and Dallas have the right group.”
Offseason moves or otherwise, the former FaZe star thinks those teams have the right players to win them a championship in 2021.